Curious incident in bunker takes the biscuit

CADDIES ROLE:Whether to overlook etiquette in order to observe a nonsensical rule poses a dilemma, writes Colin Byrne 

THERE WAS a curious incident at the Canadian Open at the Glen Abbey Country Club in Oakville, west of Toronto, last week. This occurred in between the torrential rain and thunderstorms that lingered over Ontario for the entire week of the tournament.

To those of you who are not particularly interested in golf, the incident involved the minutiae of the rules and therefore you might want to move on to something a little more stimulating at this point.

For the rest of you, who have a sense of justice and equality in a game that arguably has the most rigid and often inane rules of any sport, this will certainly get your attention.

The rules of golf are strict and fastidious because with the isolation of the game, played over a vast terrain for four hours and more, it would be very easy for competitors to overlook a few guidelines when nobody was looking. For this reason the rules are uncompromising, if somewhat bizarre when examined more closely.

Given the aptitude for modern sports people to stretch the strictures of their chosen sport often beyond the limits, from doping in athletics to blatant childlike dishonesty in soccer, I am in favour of the preservation of the strict rules of golf.

However, there are always exceptions, where the application of the rules makes me wonder if one should not be playing professional golf with a lawyer present at all times, given the consequences of mistakes can be so severe, from penalties and disqualification to dismissal.

In most cases basic common sense will lead the player and caddie in golf to make the correct judgment about what is right and wrong, but in the grey areas of the rules of golf almost 100 per cent of the time the penalised player gets punished for an error when there was zero intent of getting an advantage and never a notion of cheating.

Last Friday in Toronto we finally started our second round at 4.55pm, having hung around for six hours the previous day to finish off our last hole of the first round. Such are the boring breaks of nature, the thunder clouds just wouldn't shift so basically, everyone had to hang around on standby, and an unhealthy amount of sugar was consumed out of boredom in the environs of the Glen Abbey clubhouse.

The Canadian Open cookie was what overloaded most of us. It is a sweet delicacy that is baked exclusively during the week of the tournament.

So when we finally did get back on the course I couldn't figure out if it was the sugar rush from the excess of cookies or the thought of actually completing our round and not having to get up at 5am the following morning for more of the same that fuelled the players to shift around the course at high speed.

It is fascinating to monitor the speed of play at professional events on the first three days compared to Sunday when players are eager to get home. Maybe it is just a coincidence but Sundays are always quicker.

Anyway, we got back out on Friday evening and we knew we had no chance of completing our round. My boss Retief (Goosen) hit his second shot to the par-five fifth, our 14th hole, and ended up in the greenside bunker. The sun was sinking low behind the spruce and beech trees that lined the fairway and the light became very dim. Retief was struggling to see clearly. The siren had not sounded for the suspension of play for the day so he had to make an effort to play his trap-shot.

Retief had walked into the bunker to assess his shot. As he did the claxon sounded which signified that the players may elect to stop playing or complete the hole they have already started; the choice is theirs. Our group chose to stop. But the group behind decided to play on without us knowing.

So as we walked back to get transported to the clubhouse I realised the group behind were playing and thus there was a chance one of them could have hit into the bunker we were in, which was still unraked.

It is not a rule of golf that you rake a bunker, but etiquette demands you leave the sand as you would wish to find it, relatively smooth. A tour rule also ensures a fine for those who do not rake a bunker after playing out of it. Retief had marked his ball with a tee and was going to wait to resume play the following morning.

I ran back to the trap, quickly asked an official who just happened to be there if I could rake the bunker, and he said I could. As it happened, one of the players behind hit his approach about a yard from where I had raked.

"Big deal", I hear you say. The next morning the same official informed us I had, in fact, breached a rule and would have incurred a two-shot penalty for Retief if the official had not given me permission to rake the bunker.

By his consent, despite the fact a rule was broken, he takes the responsibility and not me. If he had not, I would have been deemed to have tested the surface, which is a breach of the rules.

The trouble with this is the rule has actually promoted bad etiquette. How would I and the player who ended up in the unraked part of the bunker have felt if this had happened?

It was very close to happening. If you didn't have a good relationship with your player there is a good chance of getting fired over such an incident, all done in the interest of respect for fellow competitors.

A rule of a similar nature was amended after a similar bunker incident in New Orleans earlier this year. The player involved was disqualified, the caddie humiliated and the next week the guardians of the game got together and changed the rule.

My curious incident in Canada last week will also be reviewed by the authorities this week. From a professional perspective, my dilemma now is whether to overlook etiquette in order to observe a nonsensical rule.

This is a worry because etiquette in this era of selfishness is a word that many modern golfers would have to look up in a dictionary.

"It is not a rule of golf that you rake a bunker, but etiquette demands you leave the sand as you would wish to find it, relatively smooth. A tour rule also ensures a fine for those who do not rake a bunker . . .