Golfblogger

So, the Club House strangely wasn’t out of bounds. However, isn’t there a rule that a player can only look for his ball for a limited time? (5 minutes) Therefore, shouldn’t Tigers ball have been declared lost because by all news accounts the search went on for 30 minutes or more.

A player can’t drop if he hasn’t found his ball within 5 minutes, whether it’s OB or not.  It’s lost after 5 minutes and should be replayed from where the last shot was hit. Maybe they could argue that the kitchen worker, who found it in the parking lot and took it, was an outside influence causing delay in finding it.  However, that was not known until after the allotted 5 minutes when it should have been declared lost.

The PGA Tour said yesterday that the ball’s location was determined “seconds” before the five minute limit expired. The rest of the time was spent in discussion about how to proceed under the rules.

I’m more than a little suspicious about the “seconds” part. But I do know that these rules discussions can go on for some time. As a golf coach, I was once involved in a rules discussion that finally ended up with arguments between three PGA teaching pros, and took three calls to the USGA.

Like you, I’m more than a little suspicious about the “seconds”.  It seems to me that it was much longr than that.  Has anyone put a stopwatch on a review of the TV broadcast?  It certainly smells like favortisim for Tiger, when an unknown rookie would have been told to replay the shot or be penalized again for delay of game.  Where did you find that the PGA determined that the ball was found “seconds” before the 5 minutes expired?

The article is here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14518915/

the bit about just beating the five minute limit is on the second page.