Watering greens during play
By Grant Spaeth
GolfWeb staff
It is axiomatic that in stroke play each of the competitors plays exactly the same course as everyone else.
Thus, it was initially jarring to learn that at the Masters, and during play, greens were watered, thus changing the conditions for different players.
So, it is understood that apart from such natural changes, the course simply must not be altered. Should the watering of greens during play be permitted?
A little background:
The Rules Committee may not move the location of a hole after any players have completed play on that green. And the same prohibition applies to tee markers -- they cannot be moved once golfers have played from the teeing ground in question.
An interesting variation on all this is the instruction, given in the past to Masters' officials, that they can walk onto the green and tamp down spike marks, provided such actions do not slow up play. (To this day, I worry that I could have tamped down the spikemark on the 12th hole that Jack Nicklaus had to putt over during his 1986 victorious charge. He missed the putt and took a bogey. He turned to me and said: Spikemark!
I had not fixed it because to have done so would have held up play. But for the rest of the afternoon I feared that I had somehow been a party to thwarting the comeback of the ages! What a relief to see him being handed the green coat later that day!)
But query: should there be such intervention, with the attendant risk of one player prospering and others being disadvantaged? What do you think?
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| Grounds worker Joe Duich checks the speed of the green.(AP) |
At times there may be differences in the course you and I play. I hit my ball into a damaged area but conclude I have to play the ball and I do so. You, however, finding your ball in the same place, think the Committee should have marked the area as ground under repair. So you ask for a ruling and are successful. You and I played different courses. But it was my failure to know the Rules and attempt to get relief which was the real cause of my not being able to play from a nicer spot.
One year in the late '80s, there were heavy rains at the Masters. The greens were not inundated. Players could still putt, so play was not suspended. But they were very, very damp and wet. The Committee permitted the crew to mop up the greens, between groups, with overgrown window squeegies. We wondered at the time whether this was fair to all parties. It was terrific for those about to play onto the mopped up green. But how about the next group, assuming no intervening wiping-up took place? More importantly, how about the group up ahead that just missed the benefits of the mopping up and had to putt through the heavy load of water? Due process and equal treatment to all players?
That one is still debated.
There are a couple of exceptions right in the Decisions book:
- If a hole has been so damaged that it cannot be repaired properly -- the dimensions no longer conform with the rules, the Committee may make a new hole in a nearby similar position. ( Rule 33-2/6)
- Occasionally a tee may be covered with water. And rather than suspend play, the Committee could move the tees provided this can be done, and these words are important: "without giving any competitor an undue advantage or disadvantage". ( Decision 25-1b/4) But if that happened around the hole, the Committee is prohibited from moving the hole; it would have to suspend play and wait for conditions to dry out. (Rule 33-2d/2)
All of which gets us back to watering the greens during play. What do you think? My view: If not watering the greens "a bit" would have subjected them to being totally "lost" then the action was permissible. One does not have to sacrifice beautiful and expensive greens to the rules of golf.
But surely all would agree that this may only occur in the rarest of circumstances, when the probability of serious loss is overwhelming. And that is what I assume was the case this year at Augusta on Thursday.
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