The Open running thread

Well, you'd be wrong. Most of the time people make contact by calling the pro shop of the host venue. Not hard to find that number. I know in the case of the PGA Tour, whoever answers the phone is instructed to take down the particular concern and relay it to the rules staff. Most of the team, I'm told, the callers get the rules wrong. But there are always some instances per day in which someone in the rules staff will watch a replay, or ask the player after his round.

 

I really like the way the top young professionals handle themselves these days. I can watch a tournament and not really care who wins and just enjoy a good show, like Sunday.

 

Conceptually, this goes against what is one of the fundamental tenets of golf, that its a gentlemen's game of honor. If so, then you've got to accept that the golfer in a tournament will make a mistake. So if some clown on a couch sees something infintesimally move, that's life, but not worth changing the flow of a tournament at the site, IMHO. This is a game played by humans, with humans making decisions every step of the way. If the playing partner(s) and the walking officials don't see anything, then it should be final.

Only because its talked about as the "gentlemen's game" and "of honor", I'll use as an example, a pickup basketbal game. One of the restrictions is you "honor" the call. There's no perfect eye in the sky who determines who is right or wrong, so you keep the flow by honoring the call and moving on. Yeah in pickup there isn't millions at stake, but you do keep the flow going.

 

I say make it $10-$20 to call in a potential rules violation (do they still have 1-900 numbers?) but if you are first to call in a legitimate one, you win the pot. If there are no "winners" it can roll over til next week. That ought to goose the ratings a little.

 

Judging by the commercials I see during tournaments, the viewership is doing ok, penny wise. But damn if that won't get more The First Teeers watching.

 

I'm watching the NBA final and I see Lebron travel and the refs don't call it because they somehow don't see it. Can I phone the arena and report it and expect them to review and change the call?
In other words, golf fans should not be able to call in rules violations.

 

Just watch golf, have a few beers and enjoy it.

Maybe I'm missing the thrill of showing up to the club Monday and getting to tell Thurston and Winthorp that you called in to report a rules violations. That must be a lot of awkward golf high fives the next day.

 

Golf is the best game ever devised, but I think we need to get rid of the notion that the people who play it are any more instilled with higher levels of morals. There are unethical cops and accountants and politicians and plumbers and teachers — and golfers. If only other players and rules officials are allowed to call penalties, it goes without saying that a player who’s out of sight of those people might be more inclined to roll his ball onto a better lie since there are no repercussions whatsoever in doing so. And in golf, when players often are 100 yards or more away from fellow competitors, there are plenty of such opportunities. When a thousand people are watching, or a hundred or even one, it helps create a more level playing field if a player who’s tempted to play loose with the rules asks himself, “I wonder if anyone is watching?”

As others have said, one rules book is in place for all tournaments — those with millions of viewers and those with no spectators, caddies, walking scorers, standard bearers, TV cameras or walking rules officials.

Is the current system perfect? No, but it’s far better than any alternative I’ve ever seen proposed.

 

You're making the mistake of equating golf with team sports. Officials or umpires see every play on a surface of a fixed size in team sports. It's impossible to have rules officials see every shot made by 144 players on a 400-acre golf course. That's why players police themselves. But sometimes they get it wrong or do something inadvertent. People need to quit trying to make golf like team sports. Apples/Oranges.

 

If you go look at the qualifying information for this year's US Open, there's an interesting little sentence in there:

You sign up to play, you sign up to be governed by those rules. And those rules clearly allow for outside viewers to note when those rules have been breached, unintentional or otherwise.

 

Though after the Lexi Thompson flap, the two governing bodies added a new decision on video evidence.

 

Right. Though it's still the case that players can be penalized -- even disqualified -- for breaches, even if inadvertent, that are reported by television viewers.