{"id":976,"date":"2011-05-03T11:12:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T18:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidhbarrett.com\/?p=976"},"modified":"2012-03-06T07:21:39","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T14:21:39","slug":"no-harm-no-foul-not-in-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/golf\/personalities\/976\/no-harm-no-foul-not-in-golf","title":{"rendered":"No Harm, No Foul? Not in Golf"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Webb Simpson was the victim of a costly penalty at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Copyright Icon SMI. <\/p><\/div>\n

There is an expression in basketball that goes \u201cno harm, no foul.\u201d For better and<\/em> worse, that expression doesn\u2019t generally apply in golf. <\/p>\n

On Sunday, it was for worse. Webb Simpson, with a one-stroke lead at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, was penalized one stroke when his ball moved slightly on the green as he prepared to tap in a one-foot putt on the 15th hole of the final round. He gained no advantage, as this was a putt he would make 100 percent of the time. What\u2019s more, he didn\u2019t really cause the ball to move. He put his putter on the ground several inches behind the ball, an act that was certainly a mere coincidence. <\/p>\n

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes golf look silly to non-golfers. Frankly, it looks silly to a lot of golfers, too. <\/p>\n

These unfortunate situations arise due to the Rules being black and white. It nearly always comes down to a question of fact\u2014only in certain special circumstances are a player\u2019s intent or \u201creasonable evidence\u201d a factor. If \u201cx\u201d happened, it\u2019s a penalty, whether or not \u201cx\u201d really helped the player. <\/p>\n

Of course, it usually traces back to a good reason for \u201cx\u201d being an infraction. Take Dustin Johnson\u2019s penalty for grounding his club in a bunker on the 72nd hole of the 2010 PGA Championship. There\u2019s a reason for not allowing a player to ground his club in a bunker. He could improve his lie in the soft sand, or he could test the condition of the sand and improve his judgment of the shot\u2014all of this in a place on the course that is considered a hazard. <\/p>\n

The manner in which Johnson touched the sand with his club gave him neither of these advantages. Nor did he even know he was in a bunker. None of that matters. He grounded his club when his ball was in a bunker, and that\u2019s a penalty. (People complain about the Rules being complicated, but you can imagine how much more complicated they would be if they tried to account for situations when a given infraction didn\u2019t really help a player.) <\/p>\n

Except for the fact that it didn\u2019t occur in a major championship, Simpson\u2019s situation was just as cruel, especially since it happened on a tap-in. It was as if with 30 seconds remaining and the game in the balance, an NBA referee decided to call a touch foul in the backcourt. Such discretionary calls or non-calls aren\u2019t a part of golf because rulings come down to facts, not officials\u2019 judgments (the positive side of this is that the outcome can\u2019t be determined by a blown judgment call). <\/p>\n

There\u2019s an additional level of unfairness in Simpson\u2019s case, because there is less justification for the Rule in the first place. The basic principle is that if a player causes his ball at rest to move, he should be penalized. That\u2019s fine, so far. Even though we aren\u2019t necessarily talking about gaining an advantage (the ball moving could either help or hurt the player), it\u2019s one of the fundamentals of the game that the ball be played from where it came to rest. <\/p>\n

It gets a little shakier when it covers the situation where we can\u2019t be certain what caused the ball to move. Since there\u2019s no such thing as a \u201cjudgment call\u201d here, the idea is that if the player might<\/em> have caused the ball to move, the Rules treat it as if he did<\/em> cause it to move. The Rules makers have judged that putting the club on the ground might cause the ball to move, so they wrote it such that if a player has taken his stance and grounded his club, he is penalized if the ball subsequently moves. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing, though: Does putting your putter down behind the ball on the green ever cause the ball to move? Yes, this might happen in longer grass in the rough and (less likely but still possible) on the fairway, when the movement of the grass might cause the ball to move. But on the short-cropped grass of the green, this isn\u2019t going to happen. <\/p>\n

When do we ever see balls at rest moving on the green? When it\u2019s windy. The only other time it might happen is if the ball is perched on the edge of a tiny depression and might still be incrementally moving all along, much like a ball hanging on the lip that takes a few seconds to fall. Simpson might have been victimized by a combination of both factors\u2014the wind was blowing fairly hard (but not a gale by any means) and he was preparing to tap in a ball that had not been marked and replaced. <\/p>\n

If it\u2019s so unlikely that a player causes the ball to move on the green unless he actually touches the ball with his club, why should the Rules penalize the player for the ball moving? It turns out the USGA and R&A, the governing bodies that write and revise the Rules, have been asking themselves that same question, even before the Simpson incident. <\/p>\n

USGA vice president Tom O\u2019Toole said on Monday that a Rule change was being considered that would state that if it was \u201cknown or virtually certain\u201d that the player didn\u2019t cause his ball to move the player would no longer be subject to penalty. The revised Rule would stay true to fact-based principles, with the tiny fudge factor of \u201cvirtually certain.\u201d But it would recognize the reality that if the ball at rest moves on a windy day on a fast green, it\u2019s virtually certain that the wind, and not the player, caused it. <\/p>\n

So, this could be a small area where \u201cno harm, no foul\u201d could legitimately apply in golf, though it\u2019s more like \u201cno cause, no foul.\u201d If it happens, it\u2019s still too late to help Webb Simpson. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is an expression in basketball that goes \u201cno harm, no foul.\u201d For better and worse, that expression doesn\u2019t generally… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1694,4907,5975,6127,6569,6570,6731,252524,18,7],"tags":[4256,4579,4018],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golf","category-haversham-baker","category-oregon-golf-assoc","category-long-island-golf-assoc","category-so-cal-golf-assoc","category-azga","category-conn-golf-assoc","category-indiana-golf-assoc","category-pga-tour-2","category-lifestyle","category-personalities","tag-zurich-classic","tag-webb-simpson","tag-rules"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}