Let’s be clear, Padraig Herrington’s two infractions of the Rules of Golf resulted in two penalties: two strokes and don’t bother to show up tomorrow.
A pretty stiff sentence for a ball that rolled a couple of dimples forward while he was retrieving his marker but didn’t roll quite the same number of dimples back after the coin was gone. Harrington of course didn’t see the ball had not returned to its original spot and was correctly penalized two strokes for hitting a ball not in its original position. Then, and also correctly, since the two stroke assessment was not determined until after he had left the scoring tent, according to the Rules of Golf the future Hall of Famer was disqualified from the European Tour HSBC Classic in Abu Dhabi for having signed what now was an incorrect scorecard.
The villain in this and the Camilo Villegas DQ at the Hyundai Tournament of Championship two weeks ago has been made out to be the television viewers who called in the errors. In both cases (but there have been many over the years) someone called or emailed officials to report what they had witnessed. Perhaps it was revealed after running the episode several times in slow-motion from recordings made on their digital video recorders but nonetheless there are a couple of things clear; Harrington and Villegas broke the Rules of Golf and neither did it with the intent of gaining an advantage. MORE…
About Ed Travis
No related posts.
