What Happened At Sybase (Guest post by Rick Woelfel)

May 22, 2012 by Tiffany Litherland

 

 

 

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Rick Woelfel is the Editor/Publisher of Women’s Golf Report where this article originally appeared. To obtain a copy via e-mail, contact him at rwoelfel2@verizon.net.

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WHAT HAPPENED AT SYBASE

By Rick Woelfel

Azahara Munoz won the LPGA’s Sybase Match Play Championship in Gladstone, New Jersey on Sunday but much of the post-tournament discussion has to do with what happened during her semifinal match against Morgan Pressel.

Munoz prevailed 2 and 1 in a match marred by two controversies.

The first occurred at the 12^th hole. Pressel was two up through the 11^th and appeared to have won the 12^th when Munoz missed a three-footer for par. But as the players reached the 13^th tee Pressel was told by LPGA official Doug Brecht that she was being penalized for violating the LPGA’s pace of play policy.

Here’s what happened.

By the time they finished the ninth hole Pressel and Munoz were out of position; they had fallen well behind Kung and Vicky Hurst, who were playing their own semifinal match ahead of them and were well behind their “Time par” for the golf course (Four hours, six minutes to complete 18 holes).

When they reached the 10^th tee, Pressel and Munoz were given a warning.  When they reached the tee at the par-3 12th they were notified by LPGA rules official Marty Robinson, the match referee, that they were being timed.
Once they were on the clock, Pressel and Munoz were both responsible for taking no more than an average of 30 seconds to play each stroke (they were also each entitled to a 10-second grace period).

The 30-second clock started each time it was that player’s turn to play.

In other words, if a player completed the hole in three strokes, she was required to do so in no more than 100 seconds (an average of 30 seconds per stroke plus the 10-second grace period).

The first player on the tee at a par three also gets a bit of extra time.

“We apply the pace of play equally to all players,” said Heather Daly Donofrio, the LPGA’s Senior Vice President of Tour Operations. “We apply it equally to all days of a tournament, whether it’s stroke play or match play. That’s to maintain a fair and competitive environment. There are no players who are ever required to play faster than anybody else. Every group in the field is required to play in the same amount of time.”

Brecht had the sole responsibility of monitoring the clock. The veteran rules official joined the group once Pressel and Munoz were put on the clock.

Pressel won the 12^th hole with a par when Munoz missed a three-foot par putt of her own. At that moment, Pressel was seemingly 3 up in the match

At that point however, she was notified that she had taken more than the allotted 100 seconds to play the 12^th hole. The penalty—loss of hole, meant Pressel was just 1-up in the match instead of 3-up as the players moved to the 13^th tee. (The penalty would have been two strokes in medal play).

“It was a really big, I think, turning point in the match,” Pressel said, “going from 2?up to 3?up, and then all of a sudden back to 1?up. I mean, it was really unfortunate.”

Pressel changed clubs on the 12th tee, which contributed to the situation.

“I had a 5?hybrid,” she said. “and I felt like the wind was gusting a little bit more, so I pulled out the four. The funny thing is, if I wouldn’t have had the honor, that probably wouldn’t have happened.  And, you know, it was strange because we had been warned for about four holes, and then all of a sudden at that point they chose to put us on the clock.  It was just a very bizarre situation on the golf course today.”

Pressel felt she wound up being penalized for Munoz’s  deliberate pace “I think that what bothers me the most is that we were given sufficient warning,” she said, “and she really didn’t do anything to speed up and then I was penalized for it.”

The pace-of-play issue was not the only incident that intruded on the match.At the 15th green  Pressel lodged a claim against her opponent, claiming that Muoz had touched her line with her putter, a breech that calls for a loss-of-hole penalty in match play.

Robinson said that Munoz “Waved her putter over the line to give herself a look at that line line. Morgan at that point made a claim and said she touched her putter on the ground and touched the line of putt.”
From his vantage point, Robinson couldn’t see if Munoz had touched the line of putt or not. At that point, he called the committee who looked at the incident on replay; the only camera angle available was from  behind and was inconclusive.

“I’m not going to say that I was disappointed that there was no penalty,” Pressel said.”  But, I mean, it is the Rules of Golf at that point, the same thing that I was penalized for three holes before.  She ?? on I think it was the 6th hole, I kind of saw her ?? she goes halfway to the hole and lines up her putt, and she put her putter down.  And I looked up at my caddie and I said, I think she just put her putter on the ground, which you can’t do.  You can’t touch the line of the putt no matter what you’re trying to do with it. 

“And then I just happened to look up and saw her do it again on 15, and I mean, I guess if she doesn’t feel like she did it, then that’s the Rules of Golf at that point.”

 “My routine is always like I always try to read the last six, seven feet to the hole, so I always put the club (Near the ground) but I don’t ground it,” Munoz said. “I just look at the hole, I don’t even make a swing.  But she thought that I grounded it, so that was the discussion. She said that I did, I said I didn’t, so they went on TV and looked at it.”

Munoz was asked if  she ever worried about inadvertantly grounding her putter in a similar situation.

“No, I always go like that, (indicating,” she said.. I feel bad because I’m like I want to say I didn’t, but I can’t say a hundred percent I didn’t because I was looking at the hole.  Maybe I grounded, but I don’t think so.”

Munoz went on to win the last three holes to take the match 2 and 1 to advance to the finals against Candie Kung.