Rickie Fowler: Physics-defying penalty exposes another USGA flaw

Rickie Fowler went from a victory stroll to nearly losing the Waste Management Phoenix Open on a single hole on Sunday. While Fowler held on to win, his experience showed just how much the USGA still needs to figure out in its effort to make the Rules of Golf as good as they can be.

Based on the way Rickie Fowler lost his entire cushion at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, it’s a safe bet that the USGA’s recent spate of rules changes hasn’t fixed all the problems.

Certainly we can agree that the bizarre assessment of a second penalty stroke against Ricky Fowler on the 11th hole of Sunday’s final round constitutes a flaw in the rulebook that went unnoticed during the recent re-writing. Simply put, there is no reasonable line of logic by which Fowler should have been assessed the second penalty.

If you missed the live playing out of the hole, here’s what transpired.

Fowler carried a five-stroke lead onto the hole, but left his approach shot to the par 4 short of the green. His chip landed hard, rolled past the pin, off the green and down a steep, rain-slick slope, narrowly avoiding a sand trap before splashing into a pond.

For that, obviously, Fowler was assessed a penalty stroke and given the option of replaying the shot or dropping close to the point where the ball entered the penalty area. Whichever option he chose, he would be laying four and hitting five.

Fowler chose to drop on the slope near the water rather than going back and replaying the shot. Debate that decision if you choose, but the fact remains that he chose a legal option. With a rules official watching, he twice dropped the ball on the slope in a legal manner, both times watching it roll back into the pond. That allowed him to place it on the spot; he did so and it stayed there.

Then, some time later, while Fowler and his caddie were yards away near the green assessing how to play the recovery shot, the ball began to roll on its own, back down into the pond.

Under the interpretation of the rule provided by the official on the scene, and based on the stipulation that Fowler’s ball was in play at the time it appeared to be sitting still on the slope, Fowler was assessed a second one-stroke penalty due to the necessity of again removing the ball from the water. He was told to re-drop, this time laying five and hitting six.

Since neither Rickie Fowler nor his caddie were in the vicinity of the ball when it began to move, they obviously couldn’t have been responsible for moving it. Unless one believes that inanimate  objects can move spontaneously — in defiance of Newton’s first law of motion — there are only two possible explanations.Either the initial judgement that the ball had won its battle with gravity on the slope was flawed, or a force outside Fowler’s control — rain or wind — had subsequently worked on it.

That fact, however, only saved Fowler from a second penalty stroke for having caused the ball to roll into the hazard. It did not absolve him from the need to take it out of the hazard. Now twice-penalized for one single shot, Fowler pitched on and made his putt, accepting a triple bogey.

The outcome, which in company with a simultaneous birdie by Branden Grace playing one hole ahead, wiped out all but one stroke of Fowler’s lead. He did, however, come back on the final holes to win…no thanks to the rules.

Here’s how stupid the rule interpretation was.

When, after failing to get the ball to sit still on the slope after twice dropping it, Fowler had placed it and seen it immediately roll back down the slope into the pond, he would not have been assessed a second penalty. In fact, the tour would have allowed him as many chances as he needed to replace the ball at that spot – or some nearby spot if that one was judged unacceptable — until it sat still.

So the entire difference between the two circumstances comes down to the fact that instead of moving immediately, the ball appeared to sit at rest for the few seconds it took Fowler and his caddie to look over the shot…and then gained enough momentum to move.

In the vast world of distinctions that are not differences, that one certainly qualifies. The tour is only fortunate that Rickie Fowler played well enough down the stretch to save it from the embarrassment of having that penalty call change the tournament’s outcome.