Wyndham Clark grounding his membership behind his ball Saturday.
NBC Golf
At Bay Hill’s ultimate gap, Wyndham Clark sparked a debate no participant desires to be on the middle of.
Did his ball transfer or not?
One of golf’s most revered — and loudest — voices, thinks it did.
“I don’t need video to see this. I saw it live and I knew the ball moved,” mentioned Brandel Chamblee on Saturday night time’s Golf Central. “I think he should have been penalized.”
To recap, Clark was tied for the lead at 9 underneath close to the tip of the third spherical of the Arnold Palmer Invitational when blew his tee shot method proper on the 18th gap. The final at Bay Hill doesn’t have as a lot room proper as Los Angeles Country Club’s ultimate gap, so Clark discovered himself within the deep tough simply wanting the devious pond that guards the correct aspect of the vaunted gap.
Hitting a shot from the thick tough over the pond to the 18th inexperienced at Bay Hill is among the most tough pictures on the PGA Tour, regardless of Clark having simply 143 yards in. As he and caddie John Ellis determined how they have been going to play to the entrance left pin, Clark tried to handle the ball with a wedge.
That’s when PGA Tour Lead TV guidelines and Video Analyst Mark Dusbabek mentioned his coronary heart “fluttered.”
NBC cameras reduce to a good shot of Clark’s clubhead behind the ball and it seems, as Clark was making an attempt to find out what membership he might get on the lie, the ball appears to sink barely deeper into the grass.
Clark hacked out to security simply brief and left of the inexperienced, however NBC play-by-play man Dan Hicks was clearly disturbed by the close-up angle of Clark placing his wedge behind the ball.
“I gotta say, we were all looking at that when he put that club behind that ball and kind of went down like that,” Hicks mentioned.
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That’s when Hicks introduced in Dusbabek to ask if there had been any violation of the foundations.
“For a ball to move, based on the definition, it has to go to a different spot,” Dusbabek mentioned. “It can move, but as long as it comes back to its original spot, it technically hasn’t moved. So, when we watch this tape, it looks like it’s come back to its same spot.”
Before being interrupted by a business break, Hicks questions if there was any probability Clark was making an attempt to enhance his lie. They picked the dialog again up when protection resumed.
“I know, Dan, that it looks bad, that maybe he’s trying to improve the area of his intended swing,” Dusbabek mentioned. “It doesn’t appear to be there’s sufficient there. It’s simply arduous to say. A participant is allowed to floor his membership with the burden of the membership in opposition to the bottom. So, that’s principally what he’s doing proper there.
“I feel his ball didn’t move, and I feel like he did nothing to affect the stroke.”
Dusbabek was referencing rule 8.1b (4) which states that gamers are allowed to, “ground the club lightly right in front of or right behind the ball,” with “ground the club lightly” that means, “allowing the weight of the club to be supported by the grass, soil, sand or other material on or above the ground surface.”
But analyst Brad Faxon challenged that Clark was solely utilizing the burden of the membership.
“There was definitely pressure pushing down there,” Faxon mentioned. “It certainly wasn’t good-looking.”
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Fellow analyst Luke Donald added that Clark wanted to make use of extra warning to keep away from the potential for an infraction. He additionally mentioned it couldn’t have benefited him a lot since he was simply laying up.
Ultimately, Clark couldn’t stand up and down for par and he’ll go into the ultimate spherical at eight underneath, one again of Scottie Scheffler and Shane Lowry.
But he was proven the video of him addressing his second shot when he obtained into scoring.
“I had no idea that even happened,” Clark told Eurosport’s Espen Blaker. “I wasn’t trying to do anything like cheating or anything like that or improve my lie. I just simply put my club down. And you know obviously, they zoom in, it makes it look worse. We all talked about it, [his playing partner] Scottie and the rules officials, they didn’t think it moved.”
Golf Central’s Todd Lewis reported that the video of Clark addressing the ball was despatched to all members of the PGA Tour guidelines committee on-site at Bay Hill. Lewis additionally reported that PGA Tour Chief Referee Ken Tackett mentioned the committee unanimously agreed that the ball wobbled and returned to its unique spot, based mostly on Clark’s testimony and the video.
The “Naked Eye” commonplace, additionally comes into impact right here. The “Naked Eye” commonplace was adopted into the Rules of Golf in 2017 to stop gamers from being penalized for issues solely high-definition or slow-motion cameras might uncover.
Rule 20.2c states, “If the facts shown on the video could not reasonably have been seen with the naked eye, that video evidence will be disregarded even if it indicates a breach of the rules.”
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However, that wasn’t sufficient to persuade Chamblee.
“I would respectfully disagree with the rules officials. I would respectfully disagree with Wyndham Clark. The ball clearly moved. He clearly didn’t ground the club lightly,” Chamblee mentioned. “Why he was putting his club into the club so forcefully is beyond me.”
Chamblee then replays the video of Clark addressing the video with a purple circle drawn across the ball and watches because the ball’s place throughout the circle adjustments as he pushes the membership into the bottom.
“You could see it without the circle,” Chamblee mentioned. “I feel he ought to have been penalized and you start to marvel what a Tour participant has to do to get a penalty. Over the final yr, year-and-a-half, two years, I’ve some violations that go unpenalized, quite a few instances!
“No longer is it a penalty to tap down spike marks. You can grab a club in the penalty area. You can inadvertently touch the sand. Your ball can move when you address it. It’s almost impossible to get a penalty these days. But when a rules violation, at least to me that is as obvious as this — and I don’t need video to see it — you would think that a penalty would be assessed.”
