Thursday
Aug202009
Bryant, Laird spared disqualification
Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:14PM
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Writing from Town and Country, Mo.
Bart Bryant and Martin Laird avoided disqualification from the Western Open, a.k.a. the BMW Championship, on Saturday, all because of a conversation about a pitch mark.
Laird's tee shot hit the fringe on the par 3 16th hole, and finished close to the hole. Bryant's shot stopped in the rough. The pitch mark of Laird's shot was between Bryant's ball and the cup, and Laird repaired it, tapping it with his putter.
Before that, they talked about it. That opened a can of golf rule worms.
After discussions with the players and checking with the United States Golf Association, PGA Tour tournament director Slugger White ruled that there was no intent by Laird to improve Bryant's line of play. However, because Laird and Bryant talked about the pitch mark, however innocently, Bryant was slapped with a two-stroke penalty for violating Rule 13-2, which covers improving the line of play.
The really sticky part: Laird's side of the story wasn't heard until after he'd signed his scorecard for an even-par 70. Had he been penalized two strokes after the fact, he'd have been disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard.
"That was my main concern," Bryant said. "I would have felt very miserable for him playing in a tournament that there's not even a cut and then he gets disqualified.
"I didn't even think about it until the middle of the next hole, and I went, 'Something just doesn't feel right.' "
Bryant decided not to sign his card until he spoke to a rules official, but didn't think it would involve Laird.
"That's what was really hard for me, (that) talking to the rules official is going to affect somebody else when they really hadn't done anything. It was a struggle."
Bryant said he could have prevented the entire episode by telling Laird not to fix the pitch mark.
"I just didn't think about it," Bryant said.
Bryant is eight strokes off the pace set by Jim Furyk and Camilo Villegas entering the final round, while Laird is 17 strokes in arrears.
Double eagles: That's not an Albatross, as the double eagle is nicknamed, but two eagles on the same hole by consecutive players in the same group. Believed to be a first in Western Open history, Bubba Watson and Billy Mayfair holed out from the fairway on the par 4 seventh hole within a minute of each other in the third round.
Watson did so first, from 128 yards, and then Mayfair did so from what the PGA Tour's ShotLink system said was the same distance.
Neither finished their round. With two holes remaining, Mayfair stands 3 under, Watson 2 over.
The numbers game: Bellerive played marginally easier in Round 2 than it did in Round 1, even though players could no longer put the ball in their hands. The average for the par 70 course was 69.250 strokes, under the 69.725 strokes of the first round.
The par-4 fourth hole was the most difficult, at 4.235 strokes, while the par-5 17th was the easiest in relation to par, averaging 4.588 strokes, even though it played at 600 yards in the second round.
The third round is showing more of the same. To this point, the average is 69.156, which, if it holds up, would be the second-lowest average round in Western history. Only last year's finale at Cog Hill, where the 65-player field averaged 69.138 strokes on a par-71 layout, is lower.
The best player number belongs to Jim Furyk. He hit 26 of 28 fairways on Saturday, including 24 straight.
Around Bellerive: Fans arrived early and stayed late. While only 25,000 season ticket booklets were sold, Thursday's washed out round prompted WGA officials to permit the use of Thursday tickets either Saturday or Sunday. That brought out approximately 10,000 extra spectators. Even at 7:30 p.m., when the last putts were sunk – play had been called because of darkness at 7:18 p.m., with players allowed to finish the hole they were on – upwards of a thousand people from the complete cast of about 35,000 were still on the course. … Sunday's television coverage begins on NBC at 1 p.m. and runs until play concludes. The Golf Channel provided five hours of extra coverage of Round 3 on Saturday afternoon, but there's no plan to air the finish of the round on Sunday morning, when the cable network has live European Tour golf slated.
– Tim Cronin
Writing from Town and Country, Mo.
Bart Bryant and Martin Laird avoided disqualification from the Western Open, a.k.a. the BMW Championship, on Saturday, all because of a conversation about a pitch mark.
Laird's tee shot hit the fringe on the par 3 16th hole, and finished close to the hole. Bryant's shot stopped in the rough. The pitch mark of Laird's shot was between Bryant's ball and the cup, and Laird repaired it, tapping it with his putter.
Before that, they talked about it. That opened a can of golf rule worms.
After discussions with the players and checking with the United States Golf Association, PGA Tour tournament director Slugger White ruled that there was no intent by Laird to improve Bryant's line of play. However, because Laird and Bryant talked about the pitch mark, however innocently, Bryant was slapped with a two-stroke penalty for violating Rule 13-2, which covers improving the line of play.
The really sticky part: Laird's side of the story wasn't heard until after he'd signed his scorecard for an even-par 70. Had he been penalized two strokes after the fact, he'd have been disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard.
"That was my main concern," Bryant said. "I would have felt very miserable for him playing in a tournament that there's not even a cut and then he gets disqualified.
"I didn't even think about it until the middle of the next hole, and I went, 'Something just doesn't feel right.' "
Bryant decided not to sign his card until he spoke to a rules official, but didn't think it would involve Laird.
"That's what was really hard for me, (that) talking to the rules official is going to affect somebody else when they really hadn't done anything. It was a struggle."
Bryant said he could have prevented the entire episode by telling Laird not to fix the pitch mark.
"I just didn't think about it," Bryant said.
Bryant is eight strokes off the pace set by Jim Furyk and Camilo Villegas entering the final round, while Laird is 17 strokes in arrears.
Double eagles: That's not an Albatross, as the double eagle is nicknamed, but two eagles on the same hole by consecutive players in the same group. Believed to be a first in Western Open history, Bubba Watson and Billy Mayfair holed out from the fairway on the par 4 seventh hole within a minute of each other in the third round.
Watson did so first, from 128 yards, and then Mayfair did so from what the PGA Tour's ShotLink system said was the same distance.
Neither finished their round. With two holes remaining, Mayfair stands 3 under, Watson 2 over.
The numbers game: Bellerive played marginally easier in Round 2 than it did in Round 1, even though players could no longer put the ball in their hands. The average for the par 70 course was 69.250 strokes, under the 69.725 strokes of the first round.
The par-4 fourth hole was the most difficult, at 4.235 strokes, while the par-5 17th was the easiest in relation to par, averaging 4.588 strokes, even though it played at 600 yards in the second round.
The third round is showing more of the same. To this point, the average is 69.156, which, if it holds up, would be the second-lowest average round in Western history. Only last year's finale at Cog Hill, where the 65-player field averaged 69.138 strokes on a par-71 layout, is lower.
The best player number belongs to Jim Furyk. He hit 26 of 28 fairways on Saturday, including 24 straight.
Around Bellerive: Fans arrived early and stayed late. While only 25,000 season ticket booklets were sold, Thursday's washed out round prompted WGA officials to permit the use of Thursday tickets either Saturday or Sunday. That brought out approximately 10,000 extra spectators. Even at 7:30 p.m., when the last putts were sunk – play had been called because of darkness at 7:18 p.m., with players allowed to finish the hole they were on – upwards of a thousand people from the complete cast of about 35,000 were still on the course. … Sunday's television coverage begins on NBC at 1 p.m. and runs until play concludes. The Golf Channel provided five hours of extra coverage of Round 3 on Saturday afternoon, but there's no plan to air the finish of the round on Sunday morning, when the cable network has live European Tour golf slated.
– Tim Cronin
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