11/05/24
October 16, 2005
Michelle Wie DQ'd in professional debut: after a Sports Illustrated reporter flagged a possible rules violation the day after it occurred. The reporter's friendly intervention cost Wie fourth place -- and a $53,126 paycheque.
Fourth place only gets you $53k on the LPGA tour? I can see why Annika and Michelle want to play on the PGA tour. That kind of money usually goes to a guy who finishes around 20th spot in a normal PGA tournament. It sucks that she got busted by a non-official, but rules are rules in golf. She broke them, she paid the price. I do think that she's learned a valuable lesson, so her education in the sport continues.
posted by grum@work at 11:05 PM on October 16, 2005
Asked why he didn't bring it up before the third round ended, Bamberger said, "That didn't occur to me. I was still in my reporter's mode. I wanted to talk to her first." Translation: What kind of story would that have been? "Wie Narrowly Avoids Disqualification" doesn't have the same ring to it as "Wie Disqualified From Debut Event" "I thought about it more [for a day and a half] and was just uncomfortable that I knew something [which is a rare thing for me]. Integrity is at the heart of the game [golf, that is, not reporting]. I don't think she cheated [and nor does anyone else, but I'm sure as hell going to get that word involved somehow]. I think she was just hasty [unlike me]." A better headline - "Reporter Tries to Make for Self by Putting One Over On 16 YEar-Old Girl"
posted by JJ at 04:04 AM on October 17, 2005
In reading the article and the comment s of the Reporter, I felt really "dirty" I think, that in the long run, Wie will overcome this.
posted by daddisamm at 05:45 AM on October 17, 2005
Agreed. Somehow, I'm not concerned about Michelle Wie. She'll double-check her drops from here on in (always a good practice), and once she wins a few of these things, she'll be able to laugh about this.
posted by chicobangs at 06:04 AM on October 17, 2005
Sorry to you golf fans, but this is a great example of why golf can never ascend into the realms of real sports. How does a signed card get overturned... a whole day later?! Isn't there any sense in golf like there is in other sports that you can't protest this far after the fact? That if the next round has started, the previous rounds are, good or bad, mistakes or no, set in stone? I wonder... should we start digging up television tape of old rounds? Maybe take a few Masters' titles away, 30 years after the fact?
Michael Bamberger, a reporter for Sports Illustrated, told tour officials Sunday afternoon that he was concerned about the drop. Rules officials Jim Haley and Robert O. Smith reviewed tape from NBC Sports before taking Wie and caddie Greg Johnston to the seventh green after the tournament ended Sunday. "If I had to make the ruling based on the videotape, to me it was inconclusive," Smith said. He had Johnston and Wie show him where the ball was in the bushes, then where they dropped. They paced it off, then used string to measure the distance and determined it to be slightly closer. "The Rules of Golf are based on facts," Smith said. "They had to tell us where it was. The fact was, the ball was closer to the hole by 12 to 15 inches."Am I really understanding this correctly? The ruling wasn't even made based on the videotape, which was "inconclusive", but on a fucking re-enactment a day later- and the congenitally retarded officials consider that a "fact"?! That'd be like a prosecuting attorney being able to submit a crime show "Dramatic re-enactment" as evidence!!! Sheesh, for all the ribbing I've done at Wie's expense, this was a total bullshit move by the officials, and for no good reason. The video they showed on ESPN certainly seemed to indicate an honest drop, followed by the ball rolling, followed by the caddy pointing to the original drop location and Wie moving the ball back to where she thought it was supposed to be. If there was a difference, it was in mere inches- and this wasn't a drop within putting location, this was a drop into the rough anyway, where those couple of inches are hardly significant to the spirit of the game. There appeared to be no cheating going on, it didn't impact the flow of the game, and video evidence was inconclusive. At worst, the punishment should have been a simple adjusting of the score to reflect the "correct" stroke total. Like I said, proof that golf. is. stupid. And that cunt of a reporter, as JJ noted it, really deserves both barrels. Certainly sounds like the guy had an axe to grind, and was actively hoping for a "gotcha" moment by keeping quiet. Yeah, way to make yourself the story, asswipe!
posted by hincandenza at 06:46 AM on October 17, 2005
BRAVO HAL!!!!!! Enough said there!!!
posted by sinisterfoot at 07:28 AM on October 17, 2005
Every sport has idiosyncratic rules that look stupid to non-fans. Golf has had this rule in its canon for over a century, so it's no shock to anyone, except for people who don't follow or understand golf and its culture. A good indicator of how accepted a rule is in a given sport is to see how the people involved react to the enforcement of the rule, and you'll notice that no one's saying that the rule is BS. In fact, no one's mocking or ridiculing Wie at all. It happens, and while she'll make extra sure next time, she (and everyone concerned) accepted the final ruling. If they pretended golf ceased to exist and invented it again from scratch, maybe the rule would be different. But they didn't. So you see, "enough said" is wrong. So Hal, calling the reporter a cunt for making a statement that worked within the protocols of the sport they were covering is just ignorant and immature.
posted by chicobangs at 07:47 AM on October 17, 2005
they ought take your press card or whatever and shove it where the sun don't shine whay an opertunistic ASSHOLE!!!!!!!
posted by FrankySP at 07:57 AM on October 17, 2005
excuse me mr repoter???? WHAT NOT WHAY
posted by FrankySP at 07:58 AM on October 17, 2005
The reporter should not be blamed for a poor decision made by golf officials. It isn't his fault that they consider day-old allegations of a rules violation and use re-enactments as evidence. I have trouble believing that he held back on the subject to increase the chances Wie would be disqualified. It's more likely he mentioned his concerns to get an interpretation of the rule, and why it didn't become a two-stroke penalty at the time. One thing that should definitely be outside the rules: Calling someone a "cunt" -- in a woman's sport discussion no less.
posted by rcade at 08:00 AM on October 17, 2005
Looking back over Michael Bamberger's comments, I'm inclined to agree with this commentator, who thinks the scapegoat for this gaffe is Wie's caddy, not the reporter. If the reporter had informed Wie's group of the possible violation during the third round, rather than waiting to ask her about it afterwards, isn't that a clear violation of journalism ethics? He would have directly affected the outcome of the round by prompting Wie to take a two-stroke penalty. How would that be any different than an NFL reporter sending word to a coach that he should call for an instant replay?
posted by rcade at 08:07 AM on October 17, 2005
This is a bit of a straw man, rcade. It's not whether or not he should have said something earlier or later. It's whether he should have opened his fucking mouth at all. Until any sporting event is over, a reporter is simply a spectator who doesn't have to pay for his ticket. End of story. That it was "a poor decision made by golf officials" to introduce this evidence is the one part you did have right.
posted by smithers at 08:27 AM on October 17, 2005
Is this the first recorded use of the "c" word on SpoFi? Did it send people's text filters running for cover? As it does when we refer to Scunthorpe United in the football threads.
posted by owlhouse at 08:28 AM on October 17, 2005
Is this the first recorded use of the "c" word on SpoFi? Did it send people's text filters running for cover? As it does when we refer to Scunthorpe United in the football threads.
posted by owlhouse at 08:29 AM on October 17, 2005
Damn. My impeccable timing has been ruined.
posted by owlhouse at 08:29 AM on October 17, 2005
My understanding has always been that the spirit of the rules required those in the know to report what they see. Haven't there been several instances of television viewers calling the network to report a violation and the PGA then acting on that when it gets passed along to them? If you break the rules, you'll be penalized, and the day after isn't too late, as the same event is still being played. I do agree, however, that using a re-enactment is a bit suspect.
posted by wfrazerjr at 08:42 AM on October 17, 2005
I think the word "re-enactment" is a little misleading - taking the player concerned back to the scene of the incident and asking her to point out where the ball was and where she dropped it to is establishing the "facts" - it's not like they got a couple of look-alikes out there and asked them to drop a ball as Michelle and her caddie might have done. I'd be more concerned with the officials if they were making 12" decisions based on TV pictures. I can see what the official means about facts too - they measured it, she dropped it closer, end of story. As for those "couple of inches" (or 12" to 15" as it says in the story) hardly being significant to the spirit of the game - the aim of the game is to get a 1.68 inch-wide ball into a 4.5 inch-wide hole - so that makes a transgression of around a foot significant in my book. You don't award a goal in soccer when someone hits the post just because they were a few inches from getting the ball in the net - the limits are there to define the boundaries of the game. I'll agree though that many of the rules of golf are contrived and ridiculous - but they are also roundly accepted as the rules of the game. The ones that aren't accepted are revised (discussed previously). I have no problem with Wie being disqualified, no matter how long after the fact. As any of these pros should know, if you're doing anything out of the ordinary, get an official to watch and sanction what you're doing as you are doing it and it doesn't matter if you get it right or not. At Wentworth one year in the matchplay, Faldo was getting a ruling from an official that he was sure was wrong. He asked a simple question - "If you're getting this wrong, but I drop it as you're telling me to, can I get penalised later?" - the answer is no. If an official on the course tells you you can do it, you can do it. (Just for the record, Faldo was right and the official was wrong). The only problem I have with the whole thing is the journalist trying to make a name for himself.
posted by JJ at 08:51 AM on October 17, 2005
Oh, had to add this -- Wie's caddy bitching about someone shooting pictures while she was in a hazard was just fucking ridiculous. He actually said, "How pictures do you have of her already?" Well, dickhead, I don't have one of her in those godawful pants playing out of a sand trap yet, so I'm getting that. And if she can't bear down enough to drown out the sound of a shutter clicking from 50 feet away, maybe she's not ready for the big time, huh? I'd like to see all photographers just not shoot her at the next event and see how her publicists appreciate it. Maybe they'll give the caddy some duct tape for his big mouth.
posted by wfrazerjr at 09:27 AM on October 17, 2005
It's not whether or not he should have said something earlier or later. It's whether he should have opened his fucking mouth at all. Until any sporting event is over, a reporter is simply a spectator who doesn't have to pay for his ticket. That's a weird distinction to make. Reporters ask golf officials all the time about rules interpretations during a tournament, and that's essentially what Bamberger did here. Getting back to an earlier comment, I wish people would stop playing the "16 year-old girl" with Wie, as if the reporter's bullying a kid. She's played around 30 pro tournaments as an amateur and has more than $10 million in endorsement deals. The team around her should have been capable of responding properly to the drop problem, and if they aren't, she's lucky it only spoiled a fourth-place finish instead of her first pro win.
posted by rcade at 09:48 AM on October 17, 2005
Hard to improve on Hal's rant but, hey, I could show 20 bad calls from the LCS series and football games from this weekend alone. Like Reggie Bush pushing Lienhart into the endzone. How is it possible someone from outside the game can influence the outcome the next day? Golf is a chickenshit sport for allowing this.
posted by smithnyiu at 10:34 AM on October 17, 2005
Here's a GolfDigest piece asking the same question you do -- the PGA will even take challenges from TV viewers. It's such an insane system I almost have to like it. Anyone know what number to call?
posted by rcade at 10:44 AM on October 17, 2005
rcade.....think you are putting a bit too much credience in the link you posted....obviously the reporter who you linked to is anything but a Wie fan, as he also wrote the article you are refering to "0 for 30" in which he says Wie might be a Natile Golbius (sp) implying an attractive woman who doesn't win......I think you give her time and the true reporters will be talking about her in the same terms as Anika. And she is 16......that's alot of time and even Tiger said he was no where near where she is when he was her age....14-15-16.
posted by gfinsf at 10:45 AM on October 17, 2005
Wie and her team responded absolutely properly to the drop problem as far as I can see. She said "ooops, I'll not do that again" and she moved on. Fair point on the kid thing though - that was just petty on my part. He'd have been bullying the player regardless of their age. If he's a golf reporter worth his salt (is he? I've no idea) he should know that waiting until the next day would mean disqualification as opposed to bringing it up before she signed her card, which would have brought penalty shots and red faces all round. I stand by the fact that he's an opportunist - or at least that he has behaved like one in this instance. As for "journalism ethics" - oxymoron anyone?
posted by JJ at 10:47 AM on October 17, 2005
I haven't watched alot of LPGA, but in the PGA when they take a drop, there is a tour official standing there. If that is true in the LPGA, then why did they not bring it up at the time. It is ridiculous that they wait a day and half to bring it up and then expect her to remember exactly where the ball was at after the drop. They should okay the drop at the time and that should be it. This is stupid and unfair to punish a player like this. This would be like taking away the game winning homerun or touchdown, the day after the game. No one would stand for that.
posted by mcstan13 at 11:15 AM on October 17, 2005
Nah - this isn't that much of a transgression on the part of the reporter. Frankly, it's the caddie and the officials that screwed up here. If the reporter wasn't sure and went to get some clarification and Wie signed her card, then well - it's the reporter's fault for not trying to save her round? The allegation that he waited so the story would be bigger is pretty baseless given what appears to have happened. And certainly, golf is one of those crazied multi-ruled events (have you seen the rules book? It makes the bible look like a pamphlet) that, as was previously mentioned, accepts rules challenges from TV viewers. So I don't see the big controversy. That's golf, baby.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 11:58 AM on October 17, 2005
As for "journalism ethics" - oxymoron anyone? Every profession has hacks. For every Judith Miller or Jayson Blair, there are 1,000 working journalists who are ethical and take such matters seriously. My wife regularly turns down swag and gifts over $25 from potential news sources. It kills me -- she was invited to play the Slammer and the Squire at the World Golf Hall of Fame, which has green fees of around $150. Immediately turned it down.
posted by rcade at 12:28 PM on October 17, 2005
Golf is a sport that requires a lot of integrity. Golfers don't have individual umpires that follow them. Therefore if the golfer has a question they must request a ruling from an official.(same as with the PGA) Michelle, for whatever reason, (golfers are loners their minds filled with the deamons of their last shot ie my god I hit it in that bush)chose not to get the offficial over to give the blessing for her action. That allowed the gallery or the television audience access to the situation. She made a mistake and was penalized appropriatly for that mistake. Tough lesson, you bet, but blame the message not the messenger. Case in point, I think it was Craig Stadler some years ago was leading a tournament and hit his ball under a tree. He had to actually get on his knees to address his ball. It had been raining that day so he decided to pull his rain pants out of his bag and put them on the ground to keep his knees from getting wet. He hit his ball and took a bogey on the hole and played the rest of his round and won the tourney. So he thought. A watcher on TV called in and thought that what he had done was to enhance his lie or something like that, (in fact that is what he had done according to the rules) and since he had already signed his card he was disqualified. Had he requested a ruling he would have won or if instead of puting the pants on the ground he would have put them on, he would have been the winner. Rules are rules and the person that said the book of rules on golf makes the Bible look like a pamphlet was correct.
posted by zinman at 12:46 PM on October 17, 2005
You'll only encourage the golf narcs with that kind of talk.
posted by chris2sy at 01:17 PM on October 17, 2005
too bad women's golf isn't more like the mafia, or this guy would be at the bottom of a water hazard by now.
posted by drjimmy11 at 01:54 PM on October 17, 2005
Honestly, did the ball bouncing forward a few inches change the shot- at all? This seems like bullshit. period. Why didnt they just make her redo the drop, or redo the hole? Or something?
posted by redsoxrgay at 04:11 PM on October 17, 2005
I can't believe I'm agreeing with (sigh) 'redsoxrgay', but that's the point that I think the golf defenders are missing. It's not that the inches even matter- even though they really don't when it comes to hitting shots that are 50 yards away or more- it's that if it was worth disqualifying a player's finish over, the time to remedy this is at the time it happens- not a day later, based on one person's questions, without using video evidence but instead relying on someone's memory as to "about where they dropped it". Imagine that! They asked her to re-enact the dropping of the ball, then measured her drop to see the difference (hence the idiotic claim by the officials that it was 12" off). That's fucking retarded! No real sport has rules like that. If what Wie did was so horrible and game-altering, the time to correct or penalize her would be right then and there (incidentally, one question I haven't heard answered is whether or not the TV commentators themselves caught the problem and addressed it in any way). The silliness of "signing" the card in itself is fucktarded in a time when millions of people and tv cameras can tell us perfectly well what her finishing score was, but the idea that after the card is signed, the next day or even a week later it can be overruled... crazy!!! Like I said, and I stand by it, this makes golf a lame sport. It might be many things, but sport it is not. Imagine this in any other sport: imagine the White Sox, sitting happily in Chicago waiting to hear who they'll face in the World Series, being told that some random people were curious about whether or not someone left 3rd base a little early on a sac fly. Even though the games are all over, the MLB head offices don't look at video evidence, but instead call back a couple of players to Anaheim and ask them to "try to remember" when they took off from third, and just when the fielder made the catch, and then disqualifying the White Sox based on this re-enactment. Right. That would be fucking insane, and not a single person in the sport would call that anything but lunacy- even if the replays showed the player did leave early and thus was out, every single voice in the game would agree the time to remedy it would be during the game, and not later. Hence golf always being a second rate silliness involving anal old farts in ugly clothing. But never a real sport.
posted by hincandenza at 01:36 AM on October 18, 2005
Hal, you're letting your loathing of "second rate silliness involving anal old farts in ugly clothing" cloud your judgement. Where are you getting "re-enactment" from? The article linked says: "He had Johnston and Wie show him where the ball was in the bushes, then where they dropped. They paced it off, then used string to measure the distance and determined it to be slightly closer." He didn't get her to drop another ball, he got her to show him where she had played a shot from - and if she can't remember that a day after she did it, she has bigger problems than losing fifty grand. Also, as has already been pointed out by someone else, while the ruling was made the following day, it was still made during the tournament. As for the signing of a card, I feel the work "fucktarded" is particularly well chosen here. However, I would also offer a version of the "it's how it has always been" argument - not as a way of suggesting it should continue to be so, but just to point out that it's a simple system that they have all used in every competitive round they have ever played, and if the player cocks it up, it is the player who is stupid, not the rule. That said, the rule-makers have made provision for idiots like these in the most recent set of rules revisions. You may not consider golf a real sport, but to me it's rules like this that make it a more noble sport than most - rugby, soccer, baseball, and most other "real sports" that spring to mind tend to be about who can cheat the best and get away with it. Not cheat in a steroid-abusing malignant way, but in a way that requires competitors to push the rules, often to breaking point. They run around their respective fields of play having to be constantly supervised by (often) several umpires or referees. Rugby perhaps is the starkest example - the referee is constantly talking to the players and telling them they are about to infringe this rule or that. It's like watching a mother with a young child. The rules of golf are there as a boundary within which to play the game. There are plenty of officials on hand for when you don't know exactly how to proceed, but it is very seldom that the officials need to intervene (as they had to in this case). It is largely self-governed and that is its charm and what makes it a demanding sport to play at a high level.
posted by JJ at 04:41 AM on October 18, 2005
Look, I respect JJ that you unquestionably have forgotten more about golf than I'll ever know. And admittedly, my statements were made heatedly. I guess what's most offensive is the "gotcha!" aspect of this. If the officials had told Wie of her mistake right away, she would have adjusted her score and she'd have just been two strokes different, and that's that. But it's like some Franz Kafka novel, waiting until they submit their card to then pounce and shout "Neener neener neener, you signed your card wrong, ha ha ha ha you were pwn3d! The PGA is l33+!!!!" on some technicality, disqualifying their entire weekend and tournament on the spot. It's more like setting some bureaucratic trap than it is to prevent cheating or ensure fair and equitable play! I remain unconvinced. It's nice that the "gentlemanly" aspect encodes the spirit of honesty and self-policing (it's not clear how it prevents cheating- I don't believe golf has a monopoly on honest players, or a lack of dishonest ones). But the manner in which this arose, the punishment meted out, and the method by which the ruling was made all stinks something rotten to my sense of "fair play". The round had long since ended, the players on the field, the commentators in the booth, and even the course officials made no comment at the time. Even tv replays (which you haven't mentioned being part of the official rules) are inconclusive: what I saw was a ball drop, bounce and roll, and the caddy point back a foot or so to compensate for the roll by moving the ball back. For all intents and purposes, Wie seemed to make a best effort to take a normal drop and play it where it hit the ground. If there was some discrepancy, it was utterly meaningless and certainly not worth changing a player's standing a whole round later after the tournament has ended. Wie wasn't trying to cheat, the play was immaterial to the end result, and it stinks of bureaucratic blowharded foolishness to demand a different result. I fail to see how the Wie situation is any different than the hypothetical White Sox situation I described above. Besides, anecdotes like zinman's above regarding Craig Stadler, as well as Wie's comments, serve not to hold up this image of golf as a "referee-less sport", but to underscore that all the smart players will simply defer to the officials on every play of consequence. Which JJ is precisely what other, mature sports do already! You have officials on the field who will intervene if some silly rule is broken (such as the dropped third strike rule or the out of baseline rule we've seen invoked in baseball recently) and set things right on the spot. Competitors can appeal decisions as well, and in some sports technology allows for correcting decision, or at least conferring with other officials. For all your talk of reverence and nobility, with results like these it ultimately makes golf sound less like a sport and competition, than like some arcane 18th-century European etiquette rules, with arbitrary and empty gestures and practices. It seems lost in all of this rule-fellating was any interest in who actually played the best game and deserved to place where they placed.
posted by hincandenza at 06:00 AM on October 18, 2005
I love SpoFi! Being a golfing 'never-was' gives my opinion no special claim - I hope I wasn't up myself enough to suggest that it did. If I did, I apologise unreservedly. The gotcha aspect of all this was caused by the reporter, not the officials. The officials acted as soon as they were aware of the problem. The thing that makes this look and feel like entrapment is the fact that Wie was not disqualified for a wrong drop, she was disqualified for declaring a wrong score. I have no problem with that rule - you make six but sign for a 5? You should be disqualified. The rule itself isn't there to entrap people and get them thrown out of the tournament - evidenced by the fact that if you sign for a higher score, you are not penalised (but the score you signed for stands). It's there so you can disqualify cheats like Vijay - but that's a whole other rant. On the one hand, yes, you would think that a game so closely examined on TV could dispense with card marking - on the other, there are many instances where only the player knows if they did something wrong. Bobby Jones once called a penalty shot on himself at a very crucial stage of a match when he grounded his club behind the ball and the ball moved a fraction. No one but Jones saw (or could have seen) it happen, but he stood off the shot, told his opponent, took his penalty and moved on. A newspaper reporter commended him for his sense of fair play and Jones snapped back "Don't be ridiculous - you might as well commend someone for not cheating." The marking of the card is a device to make you sign your name to your score as an honest reflection of your day's play - it keeps you honest and keeps everyone playing to the same rules instead of saying "Well, that nearly went in, I nearly did that right, so let's call that a four, OK?" Wie didn't cheat - she didn't try to gain an advantage - but whether she meant to or not, and whether it was an inch or ten yards, she did gain an advantage. She's not bigger than the game, and whether you agree with the rules or not, she was in contravention of them. She will learn (probably now has learnt) that when you're taking a drop, it's wise to call an official to watch what you're doing and sanction it. That's a perk of the pace of play in golf verses other sports - it's not like in rugby you can freeze everything and call the ref over to explain that you'd like to stick your boot into a ruck and try to move someone's head out of the way and ask him if that's going to be all right. Golf (and snooker now that I think of it) is different from many sports because it doesn't have an aspect of sailing as close to the regulatory wind as you can in order to gain the edge on your opponents. The comparison to the ball game isn't a good one - it's not like coming back after a game, it's like coming back after a play within the game and reviewing a decision. makes golf sound less like a sport and competition, than like some arcane 18th-century European etiquette rules, with arbitrary and empty gestures and practices The R&A should put that on the first page of the rules. As a footnote, Stadler was kneeling on a towel, not his waterproof trousers, and was done for "building a stance" - again, while he may have been simply trying to avoid finishing "the round looking like a gardner", he did gain an advantage in having a dry surface underneath him while a player who had adhered to the rules would have run the risk of slipping. Torrey Pines later invited him back to help them chop the tree down, but I can't find a picture of that sadly.
posted by JJ at 08:21 AM on October 18, 2005
When I was a kid, my dad was briefly a lap counter for some Indy-style racing circuit in Texas. Golf's celebration of player scorekeeping makes me think that racing missed an opportunity by not making drivers count their own laps. Would any of this be a controversy if Wie had simply been penalized two shots after the tournament, rather than being disqualified? I think it's wrong to call a post-round penalty "signing the wrong scorecard," when Wie had no reason to believe her score was incorrect after the third round.
posted by rcade at 08:57 AM on October 18, 2005
What she believed has nothing to do with it - does a batter in a ballgame's feelings about whether or not he was out or safe come into the umpire's reckoning? Her score was wrong, she signed for it, out you go! And, just to be pedantic, she didn't sign the wrong scorecard (which the rule-makers have now acknowledged is a silly reason to get disqualified and changed the rule), she signed for a wrong score.
posted by JJ at 10:49 AM on October 18, 2005
JJ, you continue to impress me with your contributions to the golf threads. Thanks. Since I can't "add" to the discussion of the rules (stupid or not...they are what they are), isn't it just so odd that it happens in her first professional tournament? Isn't it also odd that a spectator of the event, not a participant, not a caddy, not an official, had such a profound influence on the outcome? If Grace Park intitates this series of events, it's not the classiest of moves but at least she's in the event.
posted by YukonGold at 11:27 AM on October 18, 2005
What she believed has nothing to do with it ... Why not? Isn't the point of the "signed for the wrong score" penalty to punish intentional efforts to cheat? After Wie's DQ, all pro golfers should insist upon an official ruling on any situation that's open to interpretation. Otherwise, they risk the same fate. Is it really beneficial to the sport of golf to slow things down that much?
posted by rcade at 11:48 AM on October 18, 2005
I hope I wasn't up myself enough to suggest that it did. Who would leave the house if they could manage that? Isn't the point of the "signed for the wrong score" penalty to punish intentional efforts to cheat? Given the lack of a First Person Narrator in golf, signing for the wrong score mistakenly and on purpose must be considered the same thing.
posted by yerfatma at 12:08 PM on October 18, 2005
Amen - on both counts. You can't make that judgement - was she careless or does she aspire to Vijay's magic pencil greatness? I believe she was the former, but saying she should be let off because she didn't mean it doesn't work. It's too subjective. Either you get disqualified for signing for a wrong score or you don't. Wie doesn't seem to have a beef with it - not in public anyway (although her comment about the ball being "an inch" closer reveals a certain displeasure) - I'm sure she's livid, but mostly with herself for not getting an official to watch her take her drop and tell her "it's back in play" (thus absolving her from retrospective punishment even if she had dropped it in the wrong place). Better it happened now than having won a tournament or, worse, a major. YukonGold - thanks - for years I thought I'd wasted my youth by spending every waking (and the odd drunken sleeping) moment of it on a golf course. Finally I have a channel for my vast font of completely useless information.
posted by JJ at 02:35 PM on October 18, 2005
I still get what you're saying, JJ, I just am with rcade- if it's not the question of reality but of ensuring a player isn't cheating, then it seems having a tour official stand by to officially sign off on every swing, every move, every putt should be required. That seems to be the only logical result of this embracing of arcane rules, which date back to a time when the capability- in man power, money, time, and technology- of tracking every player's every move didn't exist. Now that it does, seems some of these rules should be dispensed with. :) Okay, tangent time JJ- you've ranted about Vijay a little here without going into details. A buddy of mine, golf aficionado, often rants about Vijay and seems to just hate the guy- I think he said something to the effect that Vijay cheated while in Indonesia to get a tour card, or something. So... what's the back story on Vijay us non-golf-fans aren't aware of?!
posted by hincandenza at 03:14 PM on October 18, 2005
In all fairness, without wanting to create a love-in, I absolutely see your point (but, as I mentioned, I love Spofi, and for exactly the reason that there are people like you and rcade about with whom I can shoot my mouth off about stuff like this without it becoming a fight). Perhaps we should get together over beer some night and design a new game of golf with precisely that bend-the-rules-as-much-as-you-can theme in mind. I can see it now - Tiger pointing at non-existant flying objects in order to distract everyone while he leather-wedges back to the fairway. Vijay is a big cheating gypsy. I've ranted at length about it before in this thread. In a nutshell, for those who can't be arsed to follow that, he was (in 1985) disqualified and subsequently banned from the sport for quite a long stretch for changing his scorecard after his marker had signed off on it to ensure he made the cut in Jakarta. My reasons for continuing to hold that against him are outlined rather vehemently in the thread. I have several other stories about Vijay, but they all involve (incredibly racist) things a certain famous Scottish coach has said to him on the range, and as stories they don't work unless everyone is drunk, you can hear the impersonation of the thick Scottish accent, and I'm fairly sure that no one is going to get too upset about me repeating the hideous comments of an aged, alcoholic racialst. One that I can share without offending too many people involves some advice said coach gave my former university team-mate on the range at Augusta one year - "Move your fucking legs, lad! Move your legs! You've got to move your legs when you're swinging a golf club! Look! Look down that line of players - who do you no see? Douglas fucking Badder! Now move your legs!"
posted by JJ at 06:26 PM on October 18, 2005
Hey JJ, Thanks for setting me straight on Stadler. It has been far to long ago for me to have had remembered it as well as you. Also thank God for the rules of golf since without them pro golf would look like a weekend country club calcutta with bad golfers thinking they are good. Foot wedges here a little roll over there...get the point. Thanks
posted by zinman at 07:16 PM on October 18, 2005
as a foot note, let us not forget about Stadlers kid being dqed from the Vegas tournament this weekend. Any comments on that?
posted by zinman at 07:18 PM on October 18, 2005
What'd he do wrong? *too lazy*
posted by JJ at 03:15 AM on October 19, 2005
Stadler had a "non-conforming club" in his bag. Apparently a club,(not disclosed which one) had a bent shaft. Said shaft had not been bent during the current round. When Stadler found it in his bag after the round started, he went to the rules official and he was disqualified. I am sure that he could have said nothing and no one would have known, but he knew and that is what is important. Sort of like the Bobby Jones story you relayed earlier. Potential cost to Stadler, had he shot a round of par he would have cashed about 136k. He had been in the chase to win the tourney. Winners share around 750k. Would not have wanted to be his caddie after that.
posted by zinman at 10:26 AM on October 19, 2005
I believe Mr. Bamberger wanted to the one to burst the bubble of a very good person with extreme talent. I always heard that a reporter is to report the news not make it. He should said something at that moment if he really cared about the sport. But, NOOOOO he had to be an a** and destroy Miss Wie's debut. He should be severly punished by SI, if they have any character. Also he should lose his tour reporter card.
posted by wargator at 04:14 PM on October 19, 2005
posted by JJ at 05:37 PM on October 19, 2005
So, JJ, what's the penalty for breaking the official in half and stuffing both halves in your bag? During the round, of course, not after. Just curious.
posted by The_Black_Hand at 03:09 PM on October 20, 2005
You don't get penalised for that, you get bonus points. Feherty (when he played) to rules official who wouldn't give him a drop: "What would happen if I called you and asshole?" Official: "You would be disqualified." Feherty: "What would happen if I just thought you were an asshole?" Official: "Not much I could do about that I suppose." Feherty: "In that case, I think you're an asshole."
posted by JJ at 04:40 AM on October 21, 2005
By sheer coincidence, George Soloman, the ESPN Ombudsman, was just wondering about the fuzzy line between reporting and commentary at his network. It seems that perhaps we should be looking beyond that and asking about the media actively influencing a competition's outcome.