[PHOTO: Mike Ehrmann]
The use of a measuring device on the practice putting green on Saturday morning led to a two-stroke penalty being assessed to the third-round score of Collin Morikawa before his final round at the Hero World Challenge.
Stay with us. This is complicated. Or maybe convoluted.
Morikawa was assessed the penalty on the fourth hole at Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas for a breach of Model Local Rule G-11 that details the restrictions on the use of green-reading materials. Morikawa’s caddie, J.J. Jakovac, had used a level to gauge the degree of slope on the practice putting green and transferred the information to a chart in Morikawa’s yardage book, according to Stephen Cox, chief referee for the PGA Tour. Cox said that Morikawa and Jakovac utilised the information on the par-4 fourth hole.
ShotLink data shows that Morikawa faced a 10-foot par putt on the fourth hole, which he missed. He tapped in for bogey.
“This is a very complicated rule,” said Cox, of the MLR that was instituted in 2022. “We respect the traditional methods of people wanting to have notes in a yardage book. There’s something that has been going on for many years, and obviously when we drafted this Model Local Rule, we wanted to protect that some players and caddies take more notes than others. And we were very specific in the fact that these handwritten notes needed to be obtained through traditional methods to protect the fundamental skill of reading greens within our sport. And that’s obviously the foundation behind why we put the model local rule into place.”
As Cox went on to explain, the use of the level isn’t in itself a breach of the rule. But writing it down in the yardage book is prohibited. “A lot of players use other formulas where they retain that information to memory,” Cox said. “And again, we’ve been very specific for those players that do use formulas. It’s fine. You do need to retain that in your memory for you to take onto the course. Unfortunately, in this case, that formula was transferred into the book as a handwritten note and then subsequently used, and that’s where the breach occurred.”
On Sunday morning, Cox confirmed with Jakovac that he, indeed, had the chart in the yardage book. Cox, who said this was not the first time the rule had been breached on the PGA Tour, informed Morikawa of the two-stroke penalty on the practice range about 15 minutes before Morikawa’s 12:03pm tee-time with Tony Finau. Instead of starting six strokes behind, Morikawa began the round eight back.
“He was very frustrated,” Cox said of Morikawa. “It’s a very complicated rule. Obviously when we implemented it back in 2022, there was a huge amount of information and conversations that we as a rules committee had with both player and caddie. Unfortunately, in this case, J.J. has fallen afoul of what is quite a complex rule.”
