This past weekend saw me witness something bizarre about the rules of golf which has left many professional golfers divided.<\/p>\n
At the ANA Inspiration final, an American Lexi Thompson was left in tears after being handed a four-stroke penalty while leading the final round of the first major of the season\u2014and then losing a play-off to So Yeon Ryu.<\/p>\n
This means that she was in a comfortable lead and in the absence of the penalty, she would have finished the final round four shots clear.<\/p>\n
Her offence was that she incorrectly replaced a marked ball in Saturday\u2019s third round. It took a television viewer to spot the offence and reported to the officials. Thompson was leading the ANA Inspiration by two shots when told of the penalty after her 12th hole. Playing the 18th hole on the final day, she had to birdie that hole to force a play-off which Ryu won at the first hole.<\/p>\n
Thompson, 22, had missed a 20-foot eagle putt on the last that would have given her a sensational victory.<\/p>\n
So what exactly did she do? Thompson appeared to put a marker at the side of her ball on the 17th green before lifting it and replacing in front of the marker prior to a putt of less than two feet.<\/p>\n
According to the BBC website, The LPGA said she \u201cbreached Rule 20-7c (Playing From Wrong Place), and received a two-stroke penalty.<\/p>\n
She incurred an additional two-stroke penalty under Rule 6-6d for returning an incorrect scorecard in round three.\u201d<\/p>\n
Remember posting a wrong score unknowingly is no longer an offence that attracts automatic disqualification.<\/p>\n
Her five-under-par third-round 67 was changed to a 71.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this a joke?\u201d Thompson is reported to have said after being informed by a rules official, before making birdies on three of the last six holes to force the play-off.<\/p>\n
Lexi Thompson\u2019s penalty came as she appeared to be heading for her second major championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past weekend saw me witness something bizarre about the rules of golf which has left many professional golfers divided. At the ANA Inspiration final, an American Lexi Thompson was left in tears after being handed a four-stroke penalty while leading the final round of the first major of the season\u2014and then losing a play-off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43781,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43779\/revisions\/43781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}