Ratings Over Integrity: Augusta Bails Out Tiger

“Dropgate” Soils the 2013 Masters

Even if you’re one of the last 7 guys in the country without HDTV, you’ve gotta be aware of what has transpired in Augusta over the last couple of days. Apparently unhappy at not laying claim to his usual percentage of Masters-related headlines (damn that kid from Taiwan), Tiger Woods found a new way to bump his cut back to its requisite 99%.

To recap, here’s what we can state as fact from Friday’s events:

:: During Friday’s round, Tiger’s 3rd shot on #15 came to rest in the hazard
:: Tiger took an illegal drop
:: Tiger signed an incorrect score card

That should be the end of it…DQ…pack your bags and enjoy your weekend with Lindsay Vonn.

Instead the entire situation, and the reputation of The Masters, is as muddied as Tiger’s ball.

Let me be very clear about one thing. I’m not saying that Tiger cheated. I’m saying he broke the rules, and in all reasonable likelihood did so unknowingly. And so despite being the best golfer on the planet, and despite his 35 years of experience playing the game, Tiger Woods – a guy with intimate knowledge of the rule book – broke a 2nd rule; he signed an incorrect score card…also unknowingly.

Ignorance is bliss.

And well…at the 2013 Masters anyway, blissful ignorance guarantees better ratings for CBS and a sizeable paycheck for Tiger. Everybody wins…except the game (and the guy whose paycheck gets deposited in Tiger’s account).

Anywhere other than the fantasy land inside ropes of Augusta ignorance of the rules is never an excuse. Try the ignorance defense in traffic court sometime. Let me know how it works.

Even between the storied magnolia trees and azaleas of Augusta, if you’re a 14 year old Asian kid, rules are rules. But when you’re Tiger the rules are whatever the Committee needs them to be. Iron that Nike shirt, Eldrick, you’re playing on Sunday. The tournament needs you.

Spin it however you’d like…and god knows the Masters committee is spinning it. After giving Tiger just enough of a penalty to make the weekend interesting, it’s pretty clear the green coats spent some time making sure the CBS broadcast team would follow the company line to the letter.

After initially suggesting Tiger should have been DQ’d or at least done the honorable thing and withdrawn, a thread-worn Nick Faldo back-peddled fast enough to pass Lance Armstrong while at the same time giving us plenty of cause to question the integrity of the stitching that holds his green jackets together. Behold the magic of Augusta.

Finding a Loophole

Somebody at a Augusta had to know…and if somebody didn’t, they’ve got no business running a local amateur tournament let alone what’s billed as the most prestigious tournament in golf. Somebody…probably multiple somebodies looked the other way and hoped nobody else would notice. But somebody did. Damn those telephone lines.

Tigergate or Dropgate, or whatever the latest trending headline is was born.

While it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that the the Augusta Tournament committee rewrote the rules of golf, at a minimum they found a creative new interpretation which will certainly hereto for be know as “The Tiger Rule“.

If it was anyone else in the field used a post round interview to admit a rules violation, he’d be watching the tournament from home, and this story would be a footnote. But Tiger is money. It’s good for CBS if he’s in the hunt on Sunday (and bad when he’s not), and its good for the Masters too. Some people would tell you the Masters isn’t the Masters without Tiger.

And so when faced with what boils down to a financial issue, a bunch of guys got together and did what guys with money problems do; they found a loophole.

It’s a tradition unlike any other.

That loophole is rule 33-7. Previously 33-7 has been referred to as the HDTV rule. The USGA added the rule…more accurately, the decision to the rule, in 2011 to give players some cover from rules infractions phoned in from the couches of America by meddlesome viewers with super-slow-motion DVRs and HDTVs. The spirit of the rule is to give the committee the the option to waive disqualification for violations that were unknowingly committed and are otherwise only perceptible with modern technology.

The rule was written to cover things like grounding a club in a hazard, or stirring up a loose impediments when playing from a red-staked treeline. Fortunately for Tiger (and CBS) the committee found enough ambiguity in the rule to give them the out they desperately wanted. So much for rules being rules.

As has been pointed out numerous times already, you didn’t exactly need an HDTV to verify Tiger’s infraction. Hell, by the time Tiger was done talking Friday evening you didn’t even need a TV. A radio would have sufficed, and it need not be an HD Radio either. In case you missed it, here’s a condensed version of Tiger’s post round interview.

Ok…Tiger didn’t actually say he took an illegal drop, he only described his illegal drop, and pretty explicitly too. And fortunately for Tiger, at the 2013 Masters, ignorance of the rules keeps you in the game, but let’s not pretend for so much as a second that Tiger’s illegal drop is covered by the spirit of 33-7. The letter, perhaps, but definitely not the spirit that anyone who believes in the integrity of the game would have envisioned.

Apart from the whole HDTV thing, 33-7 is supposed to cover a player who wasn’t aware he committed a violation, not to bail out a ratings-generator who got frustrated and made a mistake that the average club golfer wouldn’t make in a hundred years.

But rather than DQ their money-man, the forward-thinkers in the green jackets co-opted rule 33-7 to also include situations where a player admits to a rules violation that nobody realized was a rules violation (except the guy on the other end of the phone). The subtle distinction is that 33-7 is supposed to cover the guy who isn’t aware he broke the rule (didn’t see the impediment move), not the guy who doesn’t know the rules, or more to the point, the guy who absolutely does know the rules, but in a moment of frustration, had a mental lapse.

At the Masters, a farting brain will incur its owner a 2 stroke penalty.

Karnack Wears a Green Jacket

Even if you buy into idea that the Masters Committee didn’t have any notion of self-preservation or star power in mind when they decided to give Tiger Woods a pass (mostly), the application of an arbitrary rule designed to induce ambiguity into a rule book that is otherwise supposed to be absolute, creates a huge problem in a stroke play competition.

In any stroke play tournament, there’s ZERO room to presume an outcome, and yet, that’s what the rule effectively does. Simply put the Master’s Committee gave Tiger Woods a gimme. A two-stroke gimme, but a gimme none the less.

A gimme, in a major? Yeah, that just happened.

Let’s go back to what we know.

Tiger Woods banged his ball into a flagstick. and watched in disgust as it rolled into hazard. A self-described “pissed” Tiger Woods took an illegal drop, and did so, by his own admission, to give himself a more advantageous playing position. To his credit, he hit a very nice shot, and only needed a single putt to finish the hole (for a 6).

Here’s what we don’t know. What would have happened if Tiger had taken a legal drop? Does he stick it to two feet? Maybe. But maybe he spins it into the hazard again. Maybe he sails the green and subsequently chips it into the hazard come back. Maybe he shanks it. Maybe he makes a natural 8 all by himself.

We just don’t know, and yet the Masters Committee is content with effectively saying “This is Tiger Woods, and we’re absolutely certain his score would have been no worse than 8”. Probable, sure. Certain…never.

Rule 33-7 not only covers phoned-in infractions, it effectively allows the committee to predict the outcome of events in a parallel universe. How’s that for the rules being absolute?

Would that fly in your Club Championship? Why shouldn’t it, it works at the Masters.

Rules, even stupid ones with dubious application, are still rules.

Self-Imposed Disqualification – Not a Chance

The media inside the ropes at Augusta have reported that the prevailing sentiment from others in the field is that Tiger Woods should have disqualified himself. Many of us would like to believe that faced with a similar situation it’s what Mr. Palmer, Mr. Nicklaus, Misters Jones, Hogan, and Snead would have done. None of us really know, and I suspect even Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer can be certain of what they would have done.

What is certain is that Tiger chose to play, and I’d expect nothing less from the foul-mouthed, club-throwing, me first guy, who just happens to be the most talented golfer on the planet.

The best thing that can happen for this Masters is for Tiger to be competitive but not quite good enough to win the 2013 Tournament. If he doesn’t claim another green jacket today all of this becomes barely a footnote, but should he go on to win, he’s Barry Bonds.

His integrity will be questioned. His victory column will forever hold an asterisk, and this tournament will be cited as one of many reasons why no matter his place in the records books in relation to Mr. Nicklaus and Mr. Palmer, he’ll never be held in quite the esteem as the guys who came before him. Time won’t transform him into Mr. Woods. He’s Tiger, and that’s all he’ll ever be.