Are golf rules always good?, Today at The 3 Irish Open Options

[larrybud]

IMO, it's an archaic rule for professional golf.

Could you imagine: "The New York Giants have been disqualified from the Superbowl for their winning score of 26 when they forgot about the missed extra point and signed for a 27."

Put it towards other sports and it is silly.

On the other hand, can you remember (or even imagine) an occasion when an NFL team fails to tabulate its score correctly? Tom Coughlin not noticing when 2 point go up instead of 3 for a field goal? When the point of the game is scoring and you're not keeping good track of your own, you deserve what you get. I don't see why the PGA doesn't simply have official scorekeepers though, just for simplicity.

No, because an NFL team isn't required to tabulate their score. That's the point. Every other sport has scoring officials. The PGA has officials with each group. It would be super easy to have them keep score. If the official makes a mistake, then you correct the mistake and move on without repercussion.

The point of the game is scoring just like any other sport. Writing down your score is not part of the act of scoring.

All that has to happen is that Tiger get DQed one time and the rule will be changed!

[minitour]

All that has to happen is that Tiger get DQed one time and the rule will be changed!

Well I'm going to jump out on a limb and say:
1) Tiger knows the rule,
2) Tiger checks his scorecard carefully after every round, before signing it and before leaving the scoring area, and
3) Not gonna happen.

Seriously folks, this rule is probably the 2nd easiest rule to comply with in golf. Why complicate it?

-mini

[krustyburger]

IMO, it's an archaic rule for professional golf.

Could you imagine: "The New York Giants have been disqualified from the Superbowl for their winning score of 26 when they forgot about the missed extra point and signed for a 27."

Put it towards other sports and it is silly.

On the other hand, can you remember (or even imagine) an occasion when an NFL team fails to tabulate its score correctly? Tom Coughlin not noticing when 2 point go up instead of 3 for a field goal? When the point of the game is scoring and you're not keeping good track of your own, you deserve what you get. I don't see why the PGA doesn't simply have official scorekeepers though, just for simplicity.

No, because an NFL team isn't required to tabulate their score. That's the point. Every other sport has scoring officials. The PGA has officials with each group. It would be super easy to have them keep score. If the official makes a mistake, then you correct the mistake and move on without repercussion.

The point of the game is scoring just like any other sport. Writing down your score is not part of the act of scoring.

All that has to happen is that Tiger get DQed one time and the rule will be changed!

And the NFL has 60,000 people watching every play that occurs. You don't have that on a golf course.

Even if there was a scoring official for each player, the player should still check his card against the official one to make sure there were no mistakes. So how would that change anything?

[DaveLeeNC]

The only thing a "scorer" will do is give the player another excuse when he signs an incorrect scorecard. The player will still have to verify his score hole for hole and this just adds one more potential source for an error.

With the high dollar purses on the line, I think verifying your score after each hole is a small price to pay for a large check at the end of the week.

If you decided to 'fix this problem' with a scorer and keep the current 'model' for scoring where 'the scorer' records the official score and the player is responsible for its correctness at the end, then you haven't changed much. However, you would at least have a scorer who is

- paying attention
- accountable
- has no incentive to do it wrong (I'm not claiming that as a serious issue)
- has no incentive to not pay attention

resulting inevitably (IMHO) in a more accurate starting place.

That is not the model that I would advocate, but it would have those improvements over the current practice.

dave

[Rockfish]

Pasted from a popular online dictionary:

Erroneous in date; containing an anachronism; in a wrong time.
If you know where to look in the movie, you can spot an anachronistic wrist watch on one of the Roman soldiers.
(of a person) having an opinion of the past; preferring things or values of the past; behind the times; over-conservative.

Synonyms outdated, archaic

Given the fact that the status quo these days is for everything under the sun to be computerised, the fact that the scoring system in golf is still reliant upon a man, a bit of paper and a pencil could very well be described as being in a wrong time.

Also, listed as synonyms (a word or phrase with a meaning that is the same as, or very similar to, another word or phrase) are both archaic and outdated - which suggests that those aren't actually valid corrections for a supposedly misused word or phrase in the first instance.

I don't know why you didn't NAME your "popular online dictionary" but I'll settle for Merriam-Webster. And I won't break copyright laws by copying and pasting, I'll just point you to it.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/...onism</a>

They do NOT list outdated or archaic as synonyms nor do they define those 2 words as meaning the same (or nearly so) as anachronism.

Further, you did NOT suggest that scoring being manual rather than computerized was anachronistic. You called the RULE that requires the golfer to verify and sign his scorecard anachronistic and be punished accordingly for an error in same. As in "It's an old fashioned rule, certainly. Probably a bit anachronistic." (which, BTW, I agree with - about it being outdated that is )

[mat562]

In the interests of not frustrating other readcers with a battle of linguistic wills, we'll agree to differ. On numerous counts by the looks of things.

Any chance of making a meaningful contribution to the discussion?

[Rockfish]

In the interests of not frustrating other readcers with a battle of linguistic wills, we'll agree to differ. On numerous counts by the looks of things.

Any chance of making a meaningful contribution to the discussion?

Any chance we can agree to disagree without being so condescending ???

Not sure anyone would consider it a "meaningful contribution" but I GAVE my opinion (when I agreed with your intent); it's an outdated rule and needs to be changed.

HOWEVER, while I think the marker's score could be considered official, the player would be foolish not to double-check it anyway and be able to have it corrected if necessary.

This post has been edited by Rockfish: May 24 2009, 08:27 PM

[jjj912]

...
Now finding that many trained, accountable scoring officials per tournament would be impractical to say the least, even for the PGA, let alone your club championship.

Every other major sport doesn't seem to have any issues with recruiting and training scoring officials. The PGA Tour can easily recruit and train scoring officials. I suspect that part of the reason they don't is that to employee a full time staff of scoring officials would be a lot more expensive than relying on a staff of volunteers. Correct me if I'm wrong on this point, but I am under the impression that the Tour relys heavily (practically speaking, maybe even exclusively?) on volunteers and course staff to run tournaments.

...
It seems outdated and a bit harsh to expect a player who has spent a mentally exhausting 5 or 6 hours concentrating exclusively on his swing and course management and not choking with a Major championship and millions of dollars on the line to then instantly switch gears to checking with absolute focus the numbers that another equally involved player wrote down for him.

Tour players have a caddy and the scorecard from their marker. Presumably, the player or his caddy also kept his own scorecard. Not to mention that a lot of these tournaments have these real big and pretty scoreboards indicating what the player shot on every hole. It's not like the player's being asked to take an exam he didn't study for. He has resources available to him to ensure that the score wrote down for each hole is correct.

Other arguments aside, it seems to me, and anyone with greater insight into the technicalities of this please correct me if I'm
wrong, that there must already BE an official score card kept for each player at a pro event. After all, how can one be DQ'd for signing an incorrect card if there is no official one with which to compare the player's submitted card?

Sometimes the players realize later that they messed up the score and DQ themselves. Or another member of the foursome catches the mistake.

Other than the situations where a player later realizes he signed an incorrect score and DQ's himself, how do we know the player's card is incorrect? Please don't tell me that the player's card is compared to the TV coverage leaderboard. That seems truly ridiculous. What if the fellow competitor and the player disagree on what was scored versus what was marked? Who, if not an official, resolves that impasse? So I have to assume there is already an official scoring system, at least a de facto one, and having players sign and submit a card that must match is just an anachronism, sometimes a costly one.

In the event of a dispute, the Committee would have to decide what is the correct score. It would appropriate to use TV coverage when determining the players actual score. See Decision 34-3/9.

[billsboy]

^^^^^

So, it still seems to me there is an official scoring system (the Committee, Decisions on the Rules that apply, big pretty scoreboards to consult, and so on) that can override whatever the player signs for anyway. So why still make him do it, at the risk of severe penalty, other than an overdone sense of the "it's always been that way" history of the game?

And as to finding scoring officials, every other sport doesn't require 100+ scorers at an event, assuming one per player. But I think we're actually making the same point anyway. It would be costly, and therefore impractical, to recruit, train, outfit, transport, feed and accomodate that many scorers each weekend.

[jjj912]

...
So why still make him do it, at the risk of severe penalty, other than an overdone sense of the "it's always been that way" history of the game?

I guess there isn't enough support. At the amateur level, I don't think there is a real need or desire to have an official scorer (how can you play a foot wedge if the guy keeping score is watching? ). Also, if the logistics and costs of training and organizing enough official scorers is higher than what the PGA Tour wants to pay, there is no way that an amateur level tournament is going to be able to afford their own official scorers.

If you really want to change the rules, the easiest way might be to modify "Conditions of Competition" (Appendix II to the Rules of Golf) to allow the Committee to assign score keeping to any person or entity that the Committee so chooses. This way, the standard practice is for a golfer to keep his own score, but at big tournaments (e.g. PGA Tour tournaments) that responsibility could be handed over to an official scorer. You would have to figure out what to do if there is a disagreement between what the golfer says is his score and what the official scorer says. Also, you would need to determine what to do if it is discovered that the official scorer made a mistake in reporting the player's score.

Another idea is to abandon the DQ penalty and replace it with "the difference, or estimated difference, between the actual score and the reported score, plus two strokes".

And as to finding scoring officials, every other sport doesn't require 100+ scorers at an event, assuming one per player. But I think we're actually making the same point anyway. It would be costly, and therefore impractical, to recruit, train, outfit, transport, feed and accomodate that many scorers each weekend.

One scorer per player seems excessive. You could have only 18 - one per hole. The players would simply pass their cards from one scorer to the next. In some cases, like when Tiger is behind a tree, Mickelson is in a trash can, Van de Velde is in the water, and Calcavechia is building a stance, the official scorer might be a bit busy trying to keep track of who gets how many penalty strokes and how many strokes the players are taking to extricate themselves from the mess their in, but it should be doable. In football (American), there are 22 players and 7 referees, about a 3:1 ratio. You would expect to have no worse than 4:1 in golf, and keeping track of 4 golfers has got be a lot easier than tracking 22 football players.

This post has been edited by jjj912: Jun 1 2009, 05:18 PM

[mikec222]

are golf rules always good? lol not at all. Golf has the most antiquated rules of any major sport.

Also many basic rules made in the beginning were not created in the spirit they have been warped in to.

[mikec222]

also, I don't see there being too big a problem with golfers keeping eachother's score, I don't think that's the issue. However, why is there a need to dq when there has been an error or, with what's common with tv rules officials nowadays, a modification of the score after the card had been signed.

At the time the score was right, how does having a penalty added after make the first score wrong? It just changed from the time the card was signed

[Rockfish]

And as to finding scoring officials, every other sport doesn't require 100+ scorers at an event, assuming one per player. But I think we're actually making the same point anyway. It would be costly, and therefore impractical, to recruit, train, outfit, transport, feed and accomodate that many scorers each weekend.

Train ? Hell, most anybody can record and add up single digit numbers !!!

Who needs PAID scorekeepers ? There are 1,000 volunteers to do most everything at a PGA Tournament. (Presumably so they can give the 55 kazillion dollars they do to charity ???)

The scorekeeper doesn't need to WATCH to keep track of their scores - the players simply tell the scorekeepr what they made after each hole. After 18 the offficial scorekeeper checks with the players to see if they want to double-check the scores. If so, the do. If not, the scorekeeper hands in the official scores, someone checks the arithmetic and that's that.