The scorecard rule – yea or nay? – Daily News

PACIFIC PALISADES – The world according to Jim, Good Walk Spoiled edition:

• Yes, a rule is a rule. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it makes sense as conditions change.

Jordan Spieth was on the business end of one of those rules at the end of Friday’s second round of the Genesis Invitational at Riviera. He’d come off the course fuming after a double-bogey on 18, which put him at 2-over for the day and 3-under for the tournament. Not great, not when you’re 10 shots off the lead, but he was assured of playing the weekend and a chance to work his way up the leaderboard.

Then he wasn’t. Spieth was disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard, which had a 3 on the par-3 third hole when he’d actually scored a 4. He explained later, in a post on The Platform Formerly Known As Twitter, “I signed for an incorrect scorecard and stepped out of the scoring area, after thinking I went through all procedures to make sure it was correct. Rules are rules, and I take full responsibility. I love this tournament and golf course as much as any on (the Tour) so it hurts to not have a run at the weekend.” …

• There really are two sides to this. There is the traditionalist viewpoint, which is that the same set of rules applies whether you’re playing a recreational round with friends or playing at the game’s highest level with the scrutiny – and scorekeeping equipment – that comes with it. Holding the professionals to the same standard not only sets an example of integrity, but it honors the game’s roots.

But then there’s the other side. We are in an era where not only is every shot recorded and measured, but the PGA Tour’s “ShotLink” technology puts not only the number of shots but their length and location at the touch of one’s smart phone. Given those tools, isn’t the ritual of having your opponent mark your scorecard after each hole kind of, you know, horse-and-buggyish? …

• Rory McIlroy, maybe the most thoughtful and eloquent player on the tour, said Saturday he sees both sides.

“You know, if we’re really trying to keep this game like unbifurcated and trying to – you know, the pros play by the same rules as the amateurs, then we all need to keep our playing partners’ scorecards and we’re responsible for that,” he said.

“But I also see the other side of the coin where there’s thousands of people watching us, every shot’s tracked on Shot Tracker and on the PGA TOUR app, so … is it really needed at this point? So I can see both sides of it, both sides of the argument. I probably am more of a traditionalist than anything else so I fall into the camp of it’s worked for so long, I don’t think you really need to change it.” …

• But this particular incident gets back to the other issue confronting this tour and this sport – the necessity of making sure your best players, and your most popular players, are on hand to attract and entertain the people who buy the tickets. Two of them, Spieth and Tiger Woods, are done for the weekend because of factors beyond their performance.

Spieth is “a top three pull for us on Tour, so it’s not good that he’s not here,” Xander Schauffele said Saturday. …

• Consider this: The radio and TV recaps about Friday’s second round didn’t mention what was then a 5-shot lead for local guy Patrick Cantlay, or Will Zalatoris’ hole-in-one on 14, or even Spieth’s disqualification. They were all about Woods’ withdrawal because of illness. See what I mean? …

• The five-shot lead that Cantlay, pride of Long Beach, Servite High and UCLA, carried into Saturday’s round was the largest 36-hole lead in this tournament since 1983. Who held that lead that year? Answer below. …

• Did we mention McIlroy is thoughtful and eloquent? He’s talked about the global nature of the game before, and Saturday he proposed a tour – “for the top 80 players in the world” – that would include events in the southern hemisphere, Asia, the Middle East, “and then sort of working our way from east to west and back into the United States for spring, summertime.”

“I don’t think we need to blow everything up, but there definitely needs to be some tweaks, I think,” he added. ” You know, the way I look at it, it would be like Champions League in European football. It sort of sits above the rest of the leagues and then all those leagues sort of feed up into that and the best of the best play against each other in the Champions League, is the way I would think about it.”

And, as he noted, “for the most part it has to work for fans and sponsors and media. Then, if you can have it work for them and you create a product that’s really good for the fan, then honestly I think you just have to convince the players to buy into it because that’s what’s going to be best for them, especially if you’re going to be an owner of that tour.” …

• And here’s the kicker, the reason things often don’t get done, not only in this sport but others as well: It’s about, he said, “trying to align everyone’s interests and trying to convince everyone that this is the right thing to do for the game of golf as a whole, and if you can convince everyone of that, then it would be pretty simple. But right now it’s just trying to get everyone singing off the same hymn sheet.”

Rory for commissioner! …

• Notable among the casualties to the cut line: Nick Dunlap, the University of Alabama sophomore who won The American Express five weeks ago as an amateur, then turned pro. This week he was 7-over. In his first event as a PGA tour member, the non-cut Signature Event at Pebble Beach, he finished 80th and last and earned $32,000.