Rickie Fowler penalty proves drop rule needs to be fixed already

Rickie Fowler can’t seem to catch a break. Just a few weeks after a series of unfortunate events nearly cost him a win in Phoenix, he became the latest victim of the new drop rule on Friday at the WGC Mexico Championship. Will the USGA make changes, or do players just need to adapt quicker?

Rickie Fowler has plenty of years left in his PGA TOUR career, but whenever he decides to hang up the spikes, he’ll almost certainly have a new job waiting for him, perhaps as a USGA rules official. After all, he’s had two high-profile situations come up in February alone, and at this pace, he’ll be quoting subsections and amendments to his playing partners in no time.

The most recent issue is one that has plagued players for two months now: the ridiculous new drop rule. Actually, let me check myself on that one: the rule itself isn’t ridiculous, but the way it’s being handled is. This is one of those situations where the USGA knew what the result they wanted was, but they simply didn’t apply a good dose of common sense to it.

First, the rule itself. Here’s the official text, straight from Rule 14.3 in the new Rules of Golf:

"The player must drop a ball in the right way, which means all three of these things:(1) Player Must Drop Ball. The ball must be dropped only by the player. Neither the player’s caddie nor anyone else may do so.(2) Ball Must Be Dropped Straight Down from Knee Height Without Touching Player or Equipment. The player must let go of the ball from a location at knee height so that the ball:Falls straight down, without the player throwing, spinning or rolling it or using any other motion that might affect where the ball will come to rest, andDoes not touch any part of the player’s body or equipment before it hits the ground. [Clarification Available →]“Knee height” means the height of the player’s knee when in a standing position."

I mean, that sounds simple enough, right? The old rule was that the ball would be dropped from shoulder height, now it’s down to knee height. According to the governing body, this gives the “desired randomness” for where a dropped ball comes to rest, while (here comes the good part) “limit[ing] the extent to which a ball will embed in sand in a bunker”.

We’ve seen this rule change come into play a ton already this year. The fine folks at Skratch even did the world a favor and put together a compilation of some early highlights.

As fun as this is (who doesn’t love some good David Feherty commentary?), almost every drop we’ve seen from knee height this year started at shoulder height, before someone caught the player and corrected them. This is where we’ll rejoin Rickie at Chapultepec.

After an absolute sh*nk (we don’t like to curse here) out of bounds on the par-4 10th on Friday, Fowler immediately got a new ball from his caddie, Joe Skovron. He took his usual shoulder-height drop and played on, eventually making a double-bogey 6. Or did he?

According to reports, Patrick Reed, who was playing in Fowler’s group, was told that Fowler had taken the now-illegal drop. Reed then brought it up to Rickie, who brought it to the attention of officials, who slapped him with a technically legal but outright ludicrous one-stroke penalty.

"“I know I didn’t drop properly, but just going through the natural kind of progression of what you do with the drop, that’s just what you’re used to,” Fowler said after his round. “I have done that for 30 years. Well, I guess not that long. I started playing at two, so 28.  So, yeah, got an extra shot on that.”"

Really, there are two glaring issues here. The first is precisely what Rickie said – he’s been playing under the “old” drop rule for nearly three decades, and a change to something so routine as a drop is going to take time. Meanwhile, somehow the rules allow for a player to recognize that they took an illegal drop, pick the ball up and do it the “right” way, with no penalty as long as they don’t hit from the “illegal” spot. Because, you know, that makes things so simple.

The second issue is the much bigger one, though. What exactly does a player stand to gain from taking a higher drop? The rule says itself that the reason for a shorter drop is to fix issues like a ball bouncing out of the drop area (which I’ve literally never seen except on extreme slopes), and preventing the depth it embeds in the rare bunker drop.

Here’s the literal translation: a player dropping from shoulder height is putting themselves at a disadvantage, so we’ll penalize them a stroke anyway. How does that make any sense to literally anybody?

The good news is that this is an easy fix: allow a player to drop from anywhere between the knees and the shoulders, and move on with life. Want an easier drop on the ball? Remember you can drop it lower to the ground. Not too concerned with that? Fine, drop it, hit it, and let’s keep moving.

Speaking of keeping on moving, perhaps the PGA TOUR might do better to deal with continuing pace of play issues instead of worrying about such a silly thing as drop height. Until then, this is on the governing bodies to get right. And hey, maybe Rickie Fowler can stop being a guinea pig for all of these changes, too. Give the other guys a chance already.