I guess I’m on a rules roll this summer. A few weeks ago I proposed a way to fix the abhorred out of bounds rule. I haven’t heard back from the USGA yet, but they know how to get in touch.
Today I want to inject some sanity into the scoring method the rules call for in tournament play. Too many golfers have been hurt unnecessarily by the rule holding a player responsible for his or her own score.
The earliest notable example I know of was when Jackie Pung shot the winning score in the U.S. Women’s Open at Winged Foot in 1957, but signed for a lower score on the fourth hole than she actually took. DQ.
The linked article recalling this incident repeats a common misunderstanding regarding incorrect scores, by saying that a player who signs for the wrong score is disqualified. A player signing for a score on a hole that is lower than actually taken is disqualified. If a higher score is signed for, the score stands and the player’s standing in the tournament is adjusted accordingly.
Also, players sign for scores on each hole. They do not sign for the total of all the hole scores. Rule 6-6d.
The next case to cause a stir was at the Masters in 1968 when Roberto De Vicenzo signed for 4 on the seventeenth hole instead of a 3, and lost by one stroke the chance to play off with Bob Goalby the next day for the title.
In the past few years, it has become not uncommon for a player in a professional tournament to be DQ’d for signing for a lower score. Sergio Garcia was a victim twice in the same year, and Boo Weekly was the playing partner who wrote down the wrong score each time. Once was in the 2007 PGA Championship, and the other time was three weeks later in the Deutsch Bank Championship. Garcia was DQ’d from the PGA, but the error was caught by tournament officials the second time before Garcia signed.
Here’s the problem. Golf is the only sport that doesn’t have an official scorekeeper. Tennis players don’t keep their scores. Shot-putters don’t have to sign for the distance they toss. Sprinters don’t have to carry their own stopwatch. Yet golfers are expected to be competitors and tournament officials at the same time.
Yes, golfers are expected to enforce rules, because many times the player is the only person who knows that a rule was broken. When the game is played on a 150-acre field instead of in a much smaller arena where an official monitors an area the size of your back yard, this is necessary.
But not for scores. That information is pretty public. When the world knows that DeVicenzo made a 3, nothing should get in the way of that score being posted.
The solution, then, in tournaments where markers accompany each group, is for the score recorded by the marker to be the official score for the players in that group. A player would be allowed to appeal a score if there was a disagreement, but otherwise the marker’s score would stand.
In tournaments where markers do not accompany each group, the players would keep each other’s score. If a player signed for a higher hole score, that score would stand, as it does now. If a player signed for a lower hole score, the correct score would be replaced and a two-stroke penalty added on the infraction.
Earlier this year the USGA and R&A issued a ruling preventing a player for being disqualified for not including penalty strokes when the player was not aware,until after the scorecard had been signed, that a rule had been broken. The basic issue remains unaddressed, though. Let’s get real on wrong scorecards and let’s have the punishment fit the crime.
Does anyone want to lay odds over which of The Recreational Golfers’ brilliant Rules suggestions becomes official first?
My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.