By This past weekend, the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour and Patrick Reed was playing at Torrey Pines which is located on the coast of San Diego, California. At Torrey Pines, there are two golf courses, North and South, that the PGA Tour will play on for the Farmers Insurance Open.
The North Course has a ton of fantastic, picture-perfect holes on the back nine. Especially on holes 16 and 17 where the Pacific Ocean is the only view, you will see. The South Course is where all of the historical memories are made. It is the only course that will be played when the 2021 United States (US) Open returns to Torrey Pines in mid-June.
Golf is a game that is centered around honesty and integrity. A frequent phrase that is used around the golfing world is “protecting the field”. It is about policing each other throughout the round so that everyone else that is in the tournament is getting the same playing field as you are.
A situation arose on Saturday, January 30th where on number 10 on the South Course, Patrick Reed hit his tee shot into the fairway bunker. He then proceeded to hit his next shot left and into the rough. The ball bounced and buried into the high, nasty rough. When Patrick Reed approached his third shot, he looked at his ball and thought that it is embedded.
When the ball is embedded it means that the ball has broken the plane of the ground. In other words, the ball cannot bounce, and it buries itself into the ground. When that happens, the player must check with his playing partners and have them agree that the ball is in fact embedded.
Then, that player must mark the ball and he can then carry on taking relief which is one club length to where he can take his stance closest to where the ball originally came to rest.
Now you might be asking yourself where is the problem? Patrick Reed was at that time leading the tournament and the live coverage by CBS was within its first hour so the cameras were all on the final group on Saturday afternoon (moving day). The problem came when on Patrick Reed’s second shot, the television cameras caught the shot on video and have the ball bouncing.
Now, this is where the embedded ball rule comes into play. Since the ball bounced, the player should not be allowed to use the embedded ball rule to his advantage. As he walked up to his ball, he asked the volunteer who marked the ball to see if his ball bounced, she said no, and he asked the players in his group if they saw the ball bounce and they all said no.
At this point, no one knows about the ball bouncing except everyone watching on TV. Patrick Reed then went on to pick up his ball to check to see if the ball broke the plane of the ground without calling over a rules official. He can technically do that, but in a big spot in the tournament with big money on the line, the whole golf world went nuts over the fact that he did not call an official over until after he already moved his ball.
Plus, Reed placed his fingers in the hole where the ball was and could have pushed the hole in a way so that it did look like the ball was buried in the ground. In a sport like golf, it is not right to just assume he did that, but Patrick Reed has a reputation of bending the rules and being sneaky about things like this dating back all the way to his college days.
If it were anyone else this would not be as big of a deal as it is but because it is Patrick Reed who was involved, it is a major story. He not only was able to get relief from his spot, but he also chipped his ball onto the green and made the putt for par to help keep the momentum of his round going.
In hindsight, Patrick Reed won by 5 shots and even if he were given that penalty, which is 2 strokes, it would not have mattered. Some may say it could have changed his mentality of having a smaller lead, but it was that week Patrick Reed was the best player in the tournament.
After his round on Saturday, he spent a long time talking to the head rules official as he signed his card talking about the incident. The Head Rules Official told Patrick that he did nothing wrong and that everything he did was textbook.
This not only shook the fans of the game but also the top players in the world, most notably Xander Schauffele. He came out and said, “Obviously the talk amongst the boys isn’t great, I guess, but he’s protected by the (PGA) Tour and that’s all that matters, I guess.” When he says “the boys” he is referring to the other PGA Tour players.
Patrick Reed then cleared it up this week while he flew to Saudi Arabia to play an event on the European Tour and said that he and Xander talked and the general message was “we’re good”. This relationship is significant because the two of them will hopefully be a part of the United States Ryder Cup team this coming September.
There are a ton of opinions flying around on social media. Who is right in this situation? Should he have been penalized? How should it have been handled? Everyone has a take on it. What is yours? Let us know in the comment section below!
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