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Sarah Brown turns down Futures Tour’s $2k offer for wrongful DQ; may take legal action

July 28 -- Sarah Brown, the Futures Tour golfer whom officials wrongly disqualified from Sunday’s final round in Concord, N.H., turned down a $2,000 settlement offer and may take legal action if the tour refuses her counter-demand of an undisclosed amount for pain and suffering.
Unacceptable. “Their $2,000 offer is appreciated but not acceptable,” Keith Brown, the golfer’s father and caddie, told New England Golf Monthly in a phone interview Wednesday.
Tour chief executive Zayra Calderon offered a public apology and the sum (equal to four Futures Tour entry fees at $500 each) to make up for officials erroneously disqualifying Brown after nine holes Sunday at The International at Concord.
Careful deliberation? Full-time rules officials Kelley Wergin and Jim Linyard summarily DQ’d Brown after a competitor reportedly blew the whistle on what she suspected was an illegal Ping wedge in Brown’s golf bag.
Rather than investigate further while Brown finished her round, the elder Brown contended, the officials spent 10 minutes perusing the USGA website that lists hundreds of acceptable clubs and decided that Brown’s 54-degree Ping Tour-W wedge did not conform to the USGA’s 2010 requirements for smaller grooves.
As crowds gathered around a confused and furious Brown, and the field backed up behind her threesome for 20 minutes, Keith Brown asked officials to let his daughter complete her round while they “call the USGA, spend some time on this.”
What if you’re wrong? Said Brown, “I asked [Linyard], ‘What if you’re wrong, what’s her remedy?’
“He said, ‘Sorry, she’s disqualified, the club is illegal,’” Brown recalled.
The stick, with a “ZG” (for “2010” and “grooves”) stenciled on the hosel, turned out to be legal. By then, however, officials had forced the distraught Brown off the course after she hit her tee shot on the 10th and attested to the other golfers’ nine-hole scores.
Not enough. While Calderon has apologized to both Browns for the screw-up and pledged to ensure such errors to do not recur, Keith Brown believes Sarah deserved more.
“They have offered nothing for the embarrassment and misery they caused her,” he said. “I’m not looking for these mega-thousands of dollars; just something for Sarah that says, ‘We screwed her over royally and made her life miserable for 24 hours.”
Brown was three shots back of third-round leader and eventual winner Jenny Shin at the start of the final round and still in contention as she made the turn at 2-over for the day. Given her standing, Brown believes the tour should add the compensatory amount to her overall tour earnings.
Money-list. “One condition is that whatever money we settle on, that gets put on the money list at the end of the year,” Keith Brown said.
Should Sarah make it into the top-10 on the all-important money list, Keith Brown suggested that the tour grant LPGA cards to 11 women.
“We do not want to bump off a player who’s otherwise already there,” the 49-year-old former mortgage banker said.
It’s a grind. Women grind it out in the backwaters of the LPGA’s developmental tour to earn their LPGA playing cards. The top five moneymakers are eligible for all LPGA tourneys, except majors, the following season; the next five receive “conditional” status that lets them earn their way into specific tourneys.
While no one will ever know for sure how Brown would have finished, Sarah believes she could have been in the money if officials had not “dragged her off the course, sobbing,” Keith said.
“The easy [back] nine were ahead of her,” he said. “She was 5-under on the back nine the first two days.”
Legal action an option. The Browns did not solicit legal help for a situation that has made headlines across the country. Instead, attorneys with dollar signs in their eyes have contacted the family, which hopes not to have to take legal action.
“It’s an option that I hope we don’t have to explore,” Keith said. “What we’ve asked for is not exorbitant. In fact, it’s ridiculously small.”
Brown, who would not disclose Sarah’s monetary demand until Calderon responded to her demand, said he expected to hear back from the tour CEO later Wednesday. A Futures Tour spokesperson did not return repeated requests from NEGM for comments regarding the latest developments.
Determined to win. Sarah Brown, for her part, will tee it up at this week’s Futures Tour event in Syracuse, N.Y., even more determined than ever.
“I want to go out and win this week with the same clubs they DQ’d me for,” the 18-year-old golfer said in a phone interview. “I want to show them they made a mistake, but that it won’t affect the way I play golf.”
Brown has made four cuts in eight events this year and stood at 106th on the money list with earnings of $2,921.

(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Kay also writes the Boston Golf Examiner and National Golf Examiner blogs.)

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