Patrick Reed is a PGA Tour player, even a Masters champion, who has a reputation for playing fast and loose with the rules of golf. Yesterday, he added to that reputation.
Today, going into the last round of the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course near San Diego, California, Patrick Reed is tied for the lead with Carlos Ortiz at 10-under par. That is two strokes ahead of the next players who are tied at 8-under par, one of whom is former Farmers champion Jon Rahm. But many players in this tournament think Reed should have been assessed a two-stroke penalty yesterday for unnecessarily picking up his golf ball. That would have put him two strokes behind Ortiz going into today’s final round.
The incident occurred on the 10th, yesterday, when Reed hit his iron second shot into thick rough in which the ball was not visible. Reed believed the ball was “embedded.” If true, the player is entitled to lift the ball and drop it under no penalty. But in such a circumstance, in which the player believes the ball is embedded, he or she should not decide that independently but ask his or her playing partners to come over and give their opinion on the matter before the player would touch the ball if it is embedded. Better yet, call for an official to make that decision. And on the PGA Tour, the latter is what should always be done since rules officials can quickly get there and thus not hold up play.
But Reed doesn’t play the game that way. Instead, he picked up the ball and then began poking his finger down in the spot where the ball had laid, inspecting the area trying to determine if it was muddy, soft turf that could have indicated an embedded ball, something many players call “a plugged ball.” Thus, Reed was examining the area AFTER lifting the ball, instead of examining IN ORDER TO make a determination as to whether or not the ball is embedded.
Now, a ball can embed if it lands in that spot, thus not bounce before it gets there. And Reed claimed the ball had not bounced because a “volunteer” said it didn’t bounce. But the television cameras closely filmed the landing of the ball, showing that it had indeed bounced first before settling in the thick rough several feet away. That just about proves that the ball could not have been embedded. And that’s why many players in the tournament think Reed should have been penalized two strokes for picking up his ball.
Situations like this make the PGA Tour look bad. IMO, Tour officials need to get tough and protect both the Tour’s reputation and the game. A PGA Tour rules official soon arrived on the scene. Reed discussed the situation with the official, who then ruled that Reed had not committed a rules infraction and allowed him a free drop. Reed got his par, yet bogeyed the next four holes, and then birdied the last hole for a total 70.
The reason this has become another rules controversy that Patrick Reed is involved in is that the rules of golf are not so definitive in this situation. It is largely due to the nature of the game. That is, it is difficult to have precise rules for every situation the game presents. Because of this, in the history of the PGA Tour its players and officials have sometimes wished the Tour could have its own rules to be distinguished from those of the two golf organizations that make the rules for all of the world of golf–the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews (R&A). Yet it better to keep the rules of the game as they are. We pro golfers have been over this turf far too long to know that the game doesn’t need rules for one group and different rules for another group.
For Reed, it’s a good thing the PGA Tour still doesn’t have the tens of thousands of golf fans spectating the tournament today due to the necessary pandemic restrictions. Otherwise, Reed would be hearing it from the gallery all day during his final round today. But Reed has been here before, with the galleries booing him and calling him a “cheater,” yet he shakes it off. We’ll see if he still has that thick-skinned, bull-headedness today as he tries to make this Farmers Insurance Open his ninth PGA Tour victory.
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