View Full Version : why golf sucks
bugstud
10-17-2005, 06:53 AM
espn story (http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=2193534)
I really like sports where you can get someone dq'ed days later on inconclusive tape evidence instead of saying something about it when it's happening.
pokerdirty
10-17-2005, 08:54 AM
yeah, i saw this. this was really sketchy. the sad thing was, if it was anyone other than wie or sorenstam, it would have been overlooked.
nolanfan34
10-17-2005, 11:25 AM
I love that the SI guy somehow could tell that she was getting an advantage by a whole foot??? Hard to believe that she really got much of an advantage, but I guess a rule is a rule. Still pretty weak though.
Michelle will just have to cry herself to sleep with her $10 million in endorsement dollars...
Clarkmeister
10-17-2005, 11:32 AM
The worst is how much of a setup it sounds like:
[ QUOTE ]
Johnston (Wie's caddy), who has spent the last 12 years caddying for Juli Inkster, got into a heated discussion with Bamberger as Wie and her family left Bighorn (after the DQ on Sunday night) in a steady rain.
Johnston was bothered that Bamberger, who was at the seventh green when Wie took the drop, waited a day before raising it with tour officials. Had she been notified Saturday before signing her card, she would not have been disqualified.
Bamberger said he paced it off after Wie, playing in the final group Saturday, finished the hole.
"I did it in crude way -- 'Let's see what she has to say.' I was hopeful she could convince me," in the Saturday interview, Bamberger said. "I thought about it more and was just uncomfortable that I knew something. Integrity is at the heart of the game. I don't think she cheated. I think she was just hasty."
Asked why he didn't bring it up before the third round ended, Bamberger said, "That didn't occur to me. I was still in my reporter's mode. I wanted to talk to her first."
[/ QUOTE ]
Didn't see it. The part I don't like is waiting until the end of the tournament. It should have been addressed before the end IMO. However, Michelle should realize it is much better for her that she was DQ'd. For a couple reasons. One is that she learned a good lesson. She asked for a favorable ruling earlier and got it. She needed to be careful with her drops. And yes, she is going to be under the microscope her whole career. She needs to get used to it. She is the one making millions. She is the one who is talking about playing the PGA Tour even though she hasn't won even a women's tour event. She isn't an amateur anymore. She took the cash and needs to learn how to deal with it.
The way the whole thing was done is weird. But it is way better she was DQ'd than to have to listen to crap for years over it. Look at what happened to Montgomery over the bad ball replacement issue. People are going to be whispering about him being a cheater forever. No matter the euro tour dealt with it, etc..., he will still hear about it. And Michelle would hear about it if there happen to be any bitchy little backstabbers on the LPGA tour. Think there are any? As it stands she took a drop that was marginally bad and they had to measure out to determine was bad. She was DQ'd over it, so I just don't think she will hear it from the other players. Unclear she could handle a monte type situation very well. So probably better she got DQ'd.
One thing I worry about is slow play. I watched some of the tournament and saw Grace Park take way too long on the par 3 she blew. Granted, she had a whiff and an unplayable and a drop etc.... But after all that she took way too long to play IMO. All the pros do I guess. If Michelle has to get an official for every drop it will be brutal. Already her caddy lines her up and helps her a lot. If the LPGA goes with the awful USGA decision allowing rangefinders, things will get slower. A couple weeks ago the LPGA played a poorly designed trump National which helped slow play, but they were getting around in 6 hours. IOW, things could get slower than they already are, which is hard to believe. Amateurs used to watching pros believe a 4 hour round is acceptable, which it isn't. People think 4:30 isn't bad, when anything longer than 3:30 is hardly golf.
pokerdirty
10-17-2005, 12:54 PM
[ QUOTE ]
And Michelle would hear about it if there happen to be any bitchy little backstabbers on the LPGA tour. Think there are any?
[/ QUOTE ]
Dude, the LPGA are a bunch of trust fund, "daddy's little girl", JAP bitches. That being said, I'm sure there will be some whispers in the clubhouse about this, but lifelong cheater? I think this blows over really fast.
Aces McGee
10-17-2005, 01:04 PM
[ QUOTE ]
I think this blows over really fast
[/ QUOTE ]
I think he was suggesting that, had she not been disqualified for it, she'd have been labeled a cheater. Since she didn't "get away with it," everyone is able to see it as an honest mistake, maybe feel a bit bad for her, (rightfully) villify Michael Bamberger, and move on, with no harm done to Wie's image.
-McGee
WLVRYN
10-17-2005, 01:04 PM
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If the LPGA goes with the awful USGA decision allowing rangefinders, things will get slower.
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How can you argue that rangefinders will slow down play? How much time do the pros spend trying to figure out the right yardage looking at their yardage books and finding sprinklers. I cant imagine knowing the right distance immediately will slow down play at all. In fact, I have to believe it will have the opposite effect. Our club has allowed them for the last two years and I believe it has really sped up the pace of play.
I played in the Las Vegas/Michelin pro-am tourney last year with Ben Crane and it was excruciating as he and his caddy discussed distances, often discussion of differences of 2 yards (and I wont even go into his preshot routine, like watching paint dry).
andyfox
10-17-2005, 01:09 PM
Towards the end of his career on the regular tour, when he was in his 60s, Sam Snead signed an incorrect scorecard at the L.A. Open. He had shot a great round the first day and a pretty good one the second day. But he made some kind of mistake on the card and the officials allowed him to rectify the mistake. There was no question they made an exception for him and some of the players, anonymously, complained that he was given a break because of who he was. It was evident the officials didn't want Snead disqualified because he was an attraction and they wanted him around for the last two days.
Anyway, the whole to-do was front page news, which took the spotlight away from whoever won the tournament. This situation is sort of similar in that it's taken the spotlight away from Aneka's remarkable achievements: winning the same tournament five times, winning player of the year eight times, her eighth win of the year, her 64th overall win.
How can I argue it? You are the unfortunate one who played with Ben Crane. How is adding a rangefinder to his preshot routine going to speed him up? The pros will still need pin sheets and yardages over the bunkers, mounds, etc... Instead of using a yardage book for the total yardage, they might use the rangefinder, although they might use both. So they will shoot a yardage to the pin then still go through the drill of saying 'It is 13 on, 142 over the bunker, etc...' At best it will be a marginal improvement. At worst the game will be slowed down. No real surprise as the USGA has abdicated all responsibility and has contributed to allowing the game to be ruined.
As to Ben Crane, it is a shame the PGA Tour doesn't enforce am adequate slow play penalty. Fines don't cut it. Only 2 strokes or DQ's will get it done.
WLVRYN
10-17-2005, 03:24 PM
Ben Crane is the posterboy for slow play, which a rangefinder wont help much, but he did have several discussions with his caddie on yardages that day that he wouldnt have had if he had the exact distance. That alone would have cut a couple of minutes off an excruciatingly long round (almost 6 hours, coupled with the fact that he called in rules officials twice for drops).
It takes about 5 seconds to shoot the yardage with the rangefinder, so that adds what, a minute or two to the round assuming the pros go through all the other routines that they do before they play. I realize that they will still consult their yardage books and pin sheets (as they should). This isnt a lot of additional time, and if it reduces anyone's preshot time, then it will be a benefit to the tour.
What the USGA did wasnt to help speed up a PGA tour round (they left that decision up to the tours to decide whether to allow them in tourneys or not). They attempted to improve the pace of play for the average players who dont have yardage books, pin sheets and caddies. They did this because average players have developed bad habits from watching the pros pace off to the exact yard. It was killing the recreational game by lengthening rounds to 5-6 hours and pushing people away from the game or keeping them from joining up because of the time commitment. Are you telling me that if your cart had a GPS system on it, it would be faster to go walk off the yardage yourself than to look at the screen? IMHO, anything that shortens a round is good thing. If the PGA tour doesnt like it, then they dont have to adopt it.
"Are you telling me that if your cart had a GPS system on it, it would be faster to go walk off the yardage yourself than to look at the screen?"
I don't think using a cart is golf either. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif
I agree the USGA has done more to ruin golf, make it expensive, and make it take a long time with the failure to catch the optimized equipmnet until it was too late. The rangefinder is not the main culprit I suppose. However, the rangefinder is something I don't think belongs on a golf course. I am getting crusty in my old age. I no longer carry 14 clubs a lot of the time. I am debating whether to ban myself from getting yardages at all. I may simply look at the overall yardage of the hole and go by eyeballing it from there. I have not been playing much tho. Maybe the next round I play I will try to do it with 8 clubs and trying to avoid all yardage markers. Problem is you can see them on my course, so you get a ballpark yardage.
My dream pro silly season event is a no caddy, no yardage book, no pin sheet, no sprinkler head 7 club max tournament on a classic course. Carry your sticks and use your eyes and feel. Tiger would win. Ben Crane not allowed. /images/graemlins/grin.gif
WLVRYN
10-17-2005, 04:24 PM
[ QUOTE ]
"Are you telling me that if your cart had a GPS system on it, it would be faster to go walk off the yardage yourself than to look at the screen?"
I don't think using a cart is golf either. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif
I agree the USGA has done more to ruin golf, make it expensive, and make it take a long time with the failure to catch the optimized equipmnet until it was too late. The rangefinder is not the main culprit I suppose. However, the rangefinder is something I don't think belongs on a golf course. I am getting crusty in my old age. I no longer carry 14 clubs a lot of the time. I am debating whether to ban myself from getting yardages at all. I may simply look at the overall yardage of the hole and go by eyeballing it from there. I have not been playing much tho. Maybe the next round I play I will try to do it with 8 clubs and trying to avoid all yardage markers. Problem is you can see them on my course, so you get a ballpark yardage.
My dream pro silly season event is a no caddy, no yardage book, no pin sheet, no sprinkler head 7 club max tournament on a classic course. Carry your sticks and use your eyes and feel. Tiger would win. Ben Crane not allowed. /images/graemlins/grin.gif
[/ QUOTE ]
I figured you were a crusty old school guy. /images/graemlins/wink.gif
The USGA is in the uneviable position of having to regulate a game against the wishes of equipment companies that have far greater resources than the USGA could ever hope to have, and against players that want to score better than they are now. I would imagine you are in a huge minority of people that wouldnt want to use available technology to improve their scores. I remember reading something when the whole COR issue came up that said that the average handicap/score of non-pro players hasnt changed much in the past 20 years, which tells me people are better off spending money on lessons and practicing than the new $500 driver.
And while I would prefer to walk when I play, the game would be unplayable for the average golfer without carts and the standard round would definitely be in excess of 5-6 hours. It would also eliminate a large portion of the golfing population from even playing at all, which is not what the USGA is interested in.
Leave it up the to PGA tour to make their own rules for the best players, but the USGA has to regulate the everyman and do what's best to get/keep people interested in golf.
Yeah, the technology isn't going to help the scores of the average player all that much. Also, a huge problem that only some people are talking about is the expense of golf caused by the equipment. Forget the 500 driver and the 300 rangefinder, think about the problems caused by the golf ball going 7 miles for people with high swing speeds. Mediocre designer du jour now builds a mediocre 7600 yard course. That takes more land. So it costs more. And all the landing areas have to be bigger, so it takes much more land, so it costs more. And now there is a lot of room between the holes and from the tips the course is long, so people don't like walking it. So they take carts, and that drives up the cost. And people have been taught golf courses are very lush with greens that stimp pretty fast, and that costs more. And to challenge the 23 year old with 117 MPH swing speed, the course is tricked up and phony from the mediocre designer. So the average player doesn't get the huge jumps in distance from the optimization, because a lot of those only happen at high swing speeds. And he plays from a set of tees he shouldn't of course because that is what guys do. So his score may actually go up because of all the wonderful technology. It will cost more, so he will play less. It will take longer, so he will play less. And some numbers are showing fewer people are playing or at least that there is no growth in players. Golf is becoming more expensive and actually less fun with the technology. I posted a while ago about how the abominable cart started the decline a long time ago, by allowing long unwalkable courses.
Maybe I will pull up my old post, but until then I will add an anecdote. My parents have a house at an old peoples' place in the palm springs area. Golf courses designed by a mediocre designer. They cost a lot to play and are kept in very good shape. There were forced carries. unbelievable at an old peoples community. Mandatory carts of course. So you have people die sooner because they don't walk. They lose strength and compress their spines riding around. And then there are forced carries once in a while. So they pay for the privilege of frustrating golf and being hurt physically. I compared it to a muni I used to play where there was a 95 year old who walked and carried his bag. dirt cheap to play too. So what is better? The modern trends suck.
jstnrgrs
10-17-2005, 05:48 PM
Why does signing an incorrect scorecard a DQ? This was obviously an accadent. Why can they just fix her score, and place her accordingly? This rule is rediculous.
fingokra
10-17-2005, 05:59 PM
shirely ewe gest
It is only a DQ if you sign for a score on a hole lower than what you made. Higher and the score stands. The player is responsible for checking that the score for each hole is correct. Not adding it. She signed for a wrong score because she didn't add the penalty for the drop. Sometimes the rule has a brutal application, but it has always been the rule and all the players know it. It is also a better rule because you have to get things right and not change them after the fact. IMO it is the only way it can work in practice. You can't go amending scores; it would be a mess.
jstnrgrs
10-17-2005, 06:04 PM
[ QUOTE ]
It is only a DQ if you sign for a score on a hole lower than what you made. Higher and the score stands. The player is responsible for checking that the score for each hole is correct. Not adding it. She signed for a wrong score because she didn't add the penalty for the drop. Sometimes the rule has a brutal application, but it has always been the rule and all the players know it. It is also a better rule because you have to get things right and not change them after the fact. IMO it is the only way it can work in practice. You can't go amending scores; it would be a mess.
[/ QUOTE ]
In every other sport, someone else keeps score.
In this situation, it seems that Wie didn't even know that she had incured a penalty. Someone should be required to inform her of this, so that she CAN fill out her scorecard correctly.
It would take all of about 30 seconds to ammend her score. What a mess indeed.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It is only a DQ if you sign for a score on a hole lower than what you made. Higher and the score stands. The player is responsible for checking that the score for each hole is correct. Not adding it. She signed for a wrong score because she didn't add the penalty for the drop. Sometimes the rule has a brutal application, but it has always been the rule and all the players know it. It is also a better rule because you have to get things right and not change them after the fact. IMO it is the only way it can work in practice. You can't go amending scores; it would be a mess.
[/ QUOTE ]
In every other sport, someone else keeps score.
In this situation, it seems that Wie didn't even know that she had incured a penalty. Someone should be required to inform her of this, so that she CAN fill out her scorecard correctly.
It would take all of about 30 seconds to ammend her score. What a mess indeed.
[/ QUOTE ]
Golf is not every other sport. The essence of golf is that the competitors compete with a proper sense of sportsmanship. Competitors must keep score honestly and call penalties on themselves. A higher standard of conduct exists in golf. If this ever goes away, golf will lose what has made it a great sport. Competitors are charged with knowing the rules and abiding by them. Period. And that means calling things on yourself. As Kevin Stadler did this weekend. That was the real rules decision. He called himself on a rule people forget about. The Tour did everything it could to prevent a DQ but the rules are clear that a DQ was in order. It will likely cost him his tour card. Golf is not about getting away with it.
Weatherhead03
10-17-2005, 06:14 PM
It's call a rule. This rule has stood for decades and im sure she knew the consequences of breaking the rule. Golf is a game about integrity and signing your score for a lower score than it actually is results in a DQ. Thats just the way it is.
Golf is so stupid about keeping score. Why on Earth don't they understand that when you have a televised tournament with officials all over the place, you don't have to make players sign cards and all of this nonsense?
I also don't know why Michael Bamberger got involved in the first place.
BadBoyBenny
10-17-2005, 08:30 PM
Yeah, I feel way worse for Stadler than Wie. What a horrible situation. For all anyone knows his club could have bent making a swing.
jstnrgrs
10-17-2005, 09:41 PM
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It is only a DQ if you sign for a score on a hole lower than what you made. Higher and the score stands. The player is responsible for checking that the score for each hole is correct. Not adding it. She signed for a wrong score because she didn't add the penalty for the drop. Sometimes the rule has a brutal application, but it has always been the rule and all the players know it. It is also a better rule because you have to get things right and not change them after the fact. IMO it is the only way it can work in practice. You can't go amending scores; it would be a mess.
[/ QUOTE ]
In every other sport, someone else keeps score.
In this situation, it seems that Wie didn't even know that she had incured a penalty. Someone should be required to inform her of this, so that she CAN fill out her scorecard correctly.
It would take all of about 30 seconds to ammend her score. What a mess indeed.
[/ QUOTE ]
Golf is not every other sport. The essence of golf is that the competitors compete with a proper sense of sportsmanship. Competitors must keep score honestly and call penalties on themselves. A higher standard of conduct exists in golf. If this ever goes away, golf will lose what has made it a great sport. Competitors are charged with knowing the rules and abiding by them. Period. And that means calling things on yourself. As Kevin Stadler did this weekend. That was the real rules decision. He called himself on a rule people forget about. The Tour did everything it could to prevent a DQ but the rules are clear that a DQ was in order. It will likely cost him his tour card. Golf is not about getting away with it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Wie was not trying to get away with it. If Golf was truly about sportsmanship, then someone (a toutnament official, a competitor, this guy from SI) should have pointed out that there was a penalty, instead of trying to get Wie DQed. That was much more unsportsmanlike than Wie's incorrect scorecard (which I don't think was unsportsmanlike in the least, and which any good sport would have allowed to be corrected). This rule is BS, and actually decreases sportsmanship in Golf.
chucksim
10-17-2005, 11:18 PM
[ QUOTE ]
Golf is so stupid about keeping score. Why on Earth don't they understand that when you have a televised tournament with officials all over the place, you don't have to make players sign cards and all of this nonsense?
I also don't know why Michael Bamberger got involved in the first place.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's always been the dichotomy I've never been happy with at the PGA tour. They keep (rightfully so) to the maxim of each player keeping an honest score, calling their own penalties, etc. That is at the heart of the game.
Then, they let decisions like this, with an outside observer essentially calling a penalty on a player, stand. They did it a couple times in the past with TV viewers CALLING IN and having a player DQ'd. (If I remember properly, one was Craig Stadler kneeling on a towel and another was (maybe Davis Love?) wiping dew to improve lie (or stance)). Both are clearly rules violations, but having outsiders call them in, that's over the line.
It is up to players, competitors, and rules officials to officiate the game. Not Fat Harvey sitting on his couch drinking his PBR calling the CBS switchboard.
I don't think Michelle was trying to get away with it. My point was about other sports where that is exactly what people do. Lineman holding. Soccer player falling down. Whatever. Not that Michelle did that.
The conduct by the SI guy was weird. Not the way things should have gone. I agree with that.
If a fellow competitor tried to allow michelle to correct the card after the fact it would probably be an agreement to waive a rule, which carries a DQ. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif
Punker
10-18-2005, 12:30 AM
How'd you like to be the SI intern making the next call to Wie's agent asking for a photo shoot or interview? If I was her, I'd be asking for an interview fee of approximately $56,000.
Saw a pic of Michelle's drop. It it may have also been a bad drop because she had her arm too low. She will need to watch this in the future as well, because my guess is that others will be watching her, probably too closely really. Can't wait for the Morgan Pressel/Michelle US Open pairing.
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