OPINION: The PGA Tour Proved It Needs Instant Replay

Playing a practice round with my high school golf team, and having been witness to a ridiculously lucky hole-in-one in the same round on a short par-3, I approached the 15th tee at the former Horsham Valley Golf Club with a 7-iron for what was believed to be a 150-yard carry to the pin (we didn’t have laser rangefinders back in the day so it was all a guessing game). Raining most of the previous two days and making this island green rather soft, I smacked a flat out perfect ball with the softest right to left fade, taking dead aim at the stick. My Titleist Tour Balata 100 descended to the green on this amazing line only to make a very heavy thwack like noise. 

The ball was nowhere to be found from the tee box but we all knew it was not in the water that surrounded this peninsula green because a thwack and a splash make two distinctly different sounds. 

Could it have been that I had just sunk the second hole-in-one of the day with my practice partner, one of the rarest feats in golf?

We walked to the green excited for the possibilities of dual aces but sadly the let down occurred moments later. We found the Titleist logo staring at me on the putting surface, mocking my golf existence with only half of its signature dimple pattern above the grass, the other half embedded into the green and just one ball outside the cup.

Dammit.

via GIPHY

This was the fall of 1992. Yup, 28 years ago, and now I hate how old I’ve gotten, but I digress. 

I had been golfing and caddying for a few years in all sorts of conditions. In fact, I looped for almost a decade, and have played or been around this game for much longer than that. I’ve carried for and played with scratch golfers to duffers to PGA TOUR and club professionals. My oh so close to an ace was and remains the only embedded ball I ever was witness to. And now we had two in the same round on the PGA TOUR?

It goes without saying that Patrick Reed proved it, and Rory McIlroy reinforced it: The PGA TOUR desperately needs to implement an instant replay system, as in immediately.

We have a massive amount of almost instant information, video, and zoom in technology to be able to assess the situation that was before both Patrick and Rory. I simply do not understand how the PGA TOUR does not have someone in the broadcast booth or trailer able to almost instantaneously call up the video replay and quickly make a determination with incidents like this.

I’m not calling either of them a cheater, though former CBS on-course reporter and analyst Peter Kostis said that Patrick Reed has a pretty awful case of Judge Smails Syndrome when it comes to improving his own lie. 

That being said, my view of both video replays of the embedded ball claims show two different landing and finishing points. Rory’s iron seems to hit in the rough, rise a couple of feet up, and backspin into almost the same initial landing point. It wasn’t the same case for Patrick’s fairway bunker blast which did go into the rough and advanced a foot or two forward with a similar height after the initial bounce. 

McIlroy, Reed embedded golf ball rulings at Farmers Insurance Open

In the third round of the 2021 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines (South), Patrick Reed and Rory McIlroy are each given relief as a result of an embedded ball per USGA rule 16.4. Reed’s situation came on the par-4 10th hole and McIlroy’s on the par-5 18th.

Basic science would suggest a ball advancing forward will not embed unless there was a hole in the dirt already. It doesn’t have the landing force, speed, or anything physical to create such an indention and plugging, even in soft conditions, because it loses the momentum thanks to hitting the longer turf already. 

I know golf is supposed to be a game of sportsmanlike behavior on the honor system, but let’s face it: everyone has cheated in some way at some point on the course. As former WWF/WWE wrestler and color commentator Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura would always tell his former play-by-play host, “It ain’t illegal unless you get caught, Monsoon.”

I have fewer doubts about Rory McIlroy’s ball being plugged than I do about Patrick Reed’s Pro V1 being on the ground as claimed, though again I won’t officially call either a cheater in this. Neither they nor on course spotters saw if the shots bounced. Both the players and the TOUR officials made their best call with the information they had at the ready.

Right there, that last statement I made proves the point: the information they had at the ready was a failure as a sports league or TOUR. 

The PGA TOUR didn’t rely on the “tape” of the shot being replayed but on the word of the player. With one of the two shots clearly showing forward progress after a very solid landing, the Tour needs to make sure the information at the ready is available to all on course officials needing a ruling and the players need to learn don’t touch their ball until approved to do so.

All the shots being levied at the CBS golf coverage team for harping about the potentially passed by infractions, but Jim Nantz and crew seemed to have gotten it right. The TOUR? Not so much.

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