Now, before starting this, there are two things I need to point out:
1) I am a huge Tiger fan. Everyone reading this blog knows it. So, obviously I am extremely biased for him, and for the record, I thought the drop he took at Augusta did not matter a fart whether it was one or two meters back or front, because he would dialed in the same anyway.
2) I suck as a golfer. I play to 19, and usually on Saturday games I take illegal drops all the time, usually because I am too lazy to walk back to the tee for a lost ball shot, or simply because I don’t want to dirty my shiny shoes. That being said, we don’t bet in our Saturday games, so we are very loose with the rules. So suck it, golf nerds who think I am a cheater. The loose-ness becomes tight when there’s a bet on the line, because, then we are a little bit more anal on ball drops, because we’re playing for RM1 or RM2, which is like USD200,000 per hole when converted.
Here’s the problem with the ball drops.
For OB or lost ball, even when we’re betting, we’re generally OK with the rule that you can drop your ball on the fairway and take a 2 shot penalty. But drop it parallel to where you think you lost your ball. Now, there’s no such rule in reality. Reality is that you were supposed to hit a provisional ball anyway and play. But sometimes, we see the ball land but when we search for it, it disappears. So that’s legitimate. Now again, I’ve played with golf nerds who insist to go back to the tee. These are the sorts that constantly walk around their lives with a seven iron stuffed up their ass, or oldish fellas who thinks everyone has all the time in the world to play golf and a 6 hour round is perfectly fine for golf. No, it’s not. Most of us have what we call a Life to go back to, so hurry along please.
Tiger faced what we call a lateral water hazard. Red stakes. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. At times, you can definitely drop the ball where the water is taken out of play which was where Woods dropped it.
The argument here was that he likely dropped the ball wrongly because you can only technically dropped where he dropped if he did a giant hook.
Let’s illustrate here:
The red line is where Tiger Woods and his partners said he hit. It’s a big hook that flew across the fairway and veered left into the water, where he eventually dropped it at the red arrow. He hit an amazing shot, a 3 wood with ball above his feet, to the fringe of the green and made double bogey. However, replays from an overhead blimp showed that his ball flight was much straighter and less hook (blue line) and likely crossed the hazard at where the blue arrow was, which meant he had to play it around 100 yards or so further back, which might cause him to triple, and tie the second guy for playoff instead of outright win.
Now, watching the overhead blimp, it does seem like the ball never hooked the way Tiger said it hooked. Which is why it’s contentious. Because the playing partner (I forgot his name) said Tiger was right. Now, Tiger is Tiger. Everyone except Steve Williams will kiss his ass, so I am thinking if Tiger said, the ball turned into an elephant halfway down the fairway and flew into the sun in a yellow horse, this playing partner would have agreed. But this is golf, as long as the playing partner agrees, and the caddies agree the ball flight was the red one, Tiger is OK to drop it. Since no one can see the ball flight better than the guys from the tee-box.
You could probably ask a spectator, but then again, everyone would have a different view at it. From the blimp, it’s hard to see how the heck it would have crossed where the red line is, it was more of the blue line.
So, even if I am a hardcore Tiger fan, it does seem very iffy to drop where he dropped.
Then again, if he had asked me, I would have said yes, it did turn into a pink elephant and flew off into the sun in a yellow horse, Mr Tiger. Yes, Sir!