Once again, there were some unfortunate Rules incidents at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. I’m sure many of you remember last year’s incident, in which Tiger Woods took an improper drop from an embedded ball in a sandy area and was assessed a two stroke penalty. This year, another marquee player was involved in a costly Rules violation, Rory McIlroy.
Rory’s incident occurred on the par-5 2nd hole during his third round. He hit his second shot into the left rough and in an area designated as the spectator crosswalk. Rory was able to take free relief from this area because it was marked as an abnormal ground condition and was defined with a white line on the ground. When taking relief from an abnormal ground condition, Rule 25-1b states, “the player must lift the ball and drop it, without penalty, within one club-length of and not nearer the hole than the nearest point of relief.” Rory determined his nearest point of relief, which was a point behind the crosswalk, where interference no longer existed from the crosswalk, or so he thought.
After Rory had holed his final putt of the round on the 18th green, but before signing his scorecard, he was approached by Dave Renwick, who is the caddie of Ricardo Gonzalez, whom Rory was paired with that day. Renwick told McIlroy that he thought McIlroy had not taken complete relief on the 2nd hole when taking his drop from the spectator crosswalk. Rory returned to the 2nd hole, along with European Tour rules officials and determined from where his divot was, that it was clear that his foot could not have been anywhere else but on the line. So what’s the big deal about having your foot on a painted line?
Well, when Rory’s foot was still on the line after taking relief, he was in violation of Rule 20-2c(v) which states that: “A dropped ball must be re-dropped, without penalty, if it rolls to and comes to rest in a position where there is interference by the condition from which relief was taken under Rule24-2b (immovable obstruction), Rule 25-1 (abnormal ground conditions), Rule 25-3 (wrong putting green) or a Local Rule (Rule 33-8a). If McIlroy would have noticed that his foot was on the line, he could have and should have, re-dropped the ball with no penalty. Rory explained in an interview after the round that his ball came to rest in a bad lie when he dropped it and if he had known that he should have re-dropped it, he may have gotten a better lie, which may have led to a birdie on the hole, instead of the par he originally thought he had made.
Rory’s par was changed to a double bogey for the 2nd hole, making his actual third round score 70 instead of 68. What made the situation even more difficult to swallow for Rory was that he came up one stroke short on Sunday to the winner, Pablo Larrazabal. I’m sure Rory will not only keep his eye on the ball from now on, but also on his feet.
