BY THE RULES:HONESTY IS always the best policy. In fact, it's a fundamental part of golf, and Brian Davis's reaction to an almost indecipherable connection with a loose reed when playing out of a hazard in the first play-off hole with Jim Furyk in The Heritage Classic on Sunday evening was, quite simply, the right thing to do.
In immediately calling over the tournament referee Slugger White to inform him of a possible contact on his backswing, Davis was upholding the integrity of the game. It didn’t matter one iota that this merest of contacts – gently brushing the twig and impossible to detect other than by slow-motion replays on television – did not give him any advantage: Davis knew the action was a rules violation. Of course, we only have to go back a few weeks to the Honda Classic for a similar show of integrity. On that occasion, Graeme McDowell called a two-shot penalty on himself for brushing the water – again, an indecipherable action to everyone except to the player involved – on his backswing when playing from the lake. At the time, McDowell was only a stroke off the lead.
In Davis’s case, the call of duty was more stark. The Englishman was involved in a play-off with Furyk and seeking a maiden win on the PGA Tour. As tournament official White observed afterwards, “That will come back to him in spades, tenfold.”
For sure, Davis’s reputation has been further enhanced by his prompt and honourable actions in calling the penalty on himself (a violation of rule 13.4 against moving a loose impediment during a takeaway). It cost him the possibility of a tournament win and a cheque for over €745,000. In other ways, it earned him a lot more.
Davis had missed the green left with a seven-iron approach to the 18th green, which he had birdied in regulation to force the play-off. His ball hit the bank and then bounced off rocks before settling on packed sand, with some reeds behind the ball.
Because he was in a hazard, Davis could not move anything and believed he could play the shot without touching the reeds. To the naked eye, it seemed he had succeeded in his effort to get the ball back into play on the green and give himself a chance of continuing that quest for a win.
But Davis immediately signalled for White to come over. “It was one of those things I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. And I thought, ‘we’d check it on TV’, and indeed there was movement,” he said. That was that, and Davis conceded victory to Furyk, who claimed his second tour win inside a month.
Davis’s actions were in contrast to those of Michelle Wie, who also fell foul of Rule 13.4 in the recent Kia Classic on the LPGA Tour. In her case, Wie attempted to play a shot from the water hazard and, after moving the ball only a matter of two or three feet, proceeded to rest her club on the ground. It cost here a two-shot penalty (and an estimated €67,000 in prize money) but she argued the case with tournament officials after the round, insisting she had used the club to prevent falling back into the water. Officials disagreed with her, and imposed the penalty shots.
Wie has some history with rules infringements: in the 2005 Samsung World Championship, she was disqualified for taking an improper drop and in the 2005 British Open she was penalised for grounding her club in a bunker.
The importance of knowing the rules – and checking your score card – was also brought home at last year’s 3 Irish Open in Baltray, where first-round leader Italian Francesco Molinari was disqualified after inadvertently signing for the wrong scores at two holes in his second round. His marker, Peter Hanson, had transposed Molinari’s scores at the 12th and 13th, so even though he signed for the correct total – a 73 – he was disqualified for signing for a lower score on one of his holes.
