Quote:
Originally Posted by arjun13
If she does this subconsciously, then she probably does it a lot and deserves to get punished. If she did it on purpose because of a small dent in the green or to gain 2cm or whatever, then she is a cheat.
This is a pretty good summary. There's no world in which a score not involving a penalty or DQ is correct. There's also no world in which signing an incorrect scorecard without penalty is correct (except maybe one where rules officials follow every group around the course).
The argument that the fans shouldn't be able to call in rules violations is understandable from people who are used to sports where officials make a call and it's final. But in golf, as a self-scoring sport, it's important to be able to make adjustments where players are found to have failed to perform their duties. In football or basketball or hockey if you get away with a penalty that isn't called, you got lucky and it's fine because everyone understands it's part of the game and they love bitching about bad referees. And there's nothing wrong with respect to integrity with "getting away with one". In golf there's no referee to make a call; as soon as you "breach" the rules the penalty is part of your score. It doesn't need to be called. It just is. If you record the wrong score you're either making a mistake or cheating and both are deserving of a penalty.
People think this incident sets a ****ty precedent, but it would set a much much ****tier one if someone was found to have cheated but nothing could be done about it because the score was already submitted and deemed final.
Last edited by stinkypete; 04-04-2017 at 12:15 PM.