LPGA Penalty called on Lexi from yesterday.

mnfats95 · April 3, 2017

If it wasn't seen on the course by someone it shouldn't be called.

Whoever emailed it in today should be ashamed.

Stocks&Bogeys · April 3, 2017

Golf snitches! In no other sport in the world can this take place! What a joke.

DaveP043 · April 3, 2017

I'm not claiming this is the case, but I'm saying its a possibility. Worst case, she moved the ball an inch to the side to avoid putting over a spike mark, or to avoid putting her ball from a slight indentation, in essence, intentionally improving her lie. That's cheating, if indeed that's what she did. Let me repeat, I'm NOT accusing her, just exploring possibilities. The evidence shows up a day late, the whole world knows she did it, she's not penalized, and she wins. That's not right either.

Its worth mentioning that the same thing happened a few years ago at the Canadian Open, except that the infraction was discovered while the round was in progress.

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golf-central-blog/choi-assessed-two-shot-penalty-wds-herself-instead/

mnfats95 · April 4, 2017

I'm not claiming this is the case, but I'm saying its a possibility. Worst case, she moved the ball an inch to the side to avoid putting over a spike mark, or to avoid putting her ball from a slight indentation, in essence, intentionally improving her lie. That's cheating, if indeed that's what she did. Let me repeat, I'm NOT accusing her, just exploring possibilities. The evidence shows up a day late, the whole world knows she did it, she's not penalized, and she wins. That's not right either.

Its worth mentioning that the same thing happened a few years ago at the Canadian Open, except that the infraction was discovered while the round was in progress.

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golf-central-blog/choi-assessed-two-shot-penalty-wds-herself-instead/

She broke a rule whether she meant to or not. I'm not really concerned about that in the slightest. What I am concerned about is the fact that someone not involved in any way other than they were watching the tournament on TV was allowed to referee the event 24 hours after it took place.

Golf is a sport where the players are to police themselves. It's up to you and your playing partners to make sure people are following the rules or suffer the consequences.

In my opinion, unless there are cameras on every shot of the entire tournament, video should not be used to make penalty rulings unless one of the competitors sees the infraction and they have to use it to prove it happened before the round is completed.

Even if they would record every shot of the tournament they shouldn't allow spectators to call for penalty reviews. None of the people playing in the tournament are going to cut you any slack on penalties and that should be good enough. If you break a rule regardless of intent and only the camera sees it happen then just like when you are playing with your Sunday foursome it doesn't hurt your score.

Did she do this on purpose? Only she knows for sure, but the pros all know that there are cameras on them the majority of the time when you are in the last group of a major championship. So I doubt she was thinking she could get away with one in this instance.

She absolutely deserves a 2 stroke penalty for the infraction, but what she didn't deserve was a 2 stroke penalty for signing a scorecard with an incorrect score because the score wasn't incorrect until 24 hours later. I believe I heard on the golf channel that this was the third time something like this has happened in the past year.

They need to adjust this so that no one who isn't involved with the tournament can call for a penalty ruling. If they want to hire people to set somewhere who watch all the footage for penalties as part of the tournament so be it, but unless they can record every shot I still maintain that they shouldn't.

It most likely cost Lexi Thompson the victory and gave So Yeon Ryu's title an asterisk whether it's warranted or not.

Where is the statute of limitations on something like this? If this had come to light today and Lexi Thompson had won do you pull the title from her and DQ her from the tournament? Do you just add the 4 strokes to her score and let her have the place that puts her? If you make the argument that the penalty happened and that 24 hours later she still deserves the strokes then wouldn't she still deserve it 48 hours later as well?

Should we go back and start reviewing footage from tournaments from 20 years ago to make sure no one else deserved a penalty? Someone has to make the determination of how long is too long. Is it same day, next day, end of tournament, or 20 years later? The only thing that makes sense to me is during the same day of the tournament. If a competitor doesn't remember that you broke the rules until the following day then that is their fault.