Dem's da rules

The unfortunate incident of Peter Whiteford being 'escorted from the course' after his disqualification at the Avantha Masters sparked a storm on social media outlets, the general target for the vitriol being the armchair referee who called in the infringement and the unfairness of the situation around the DQ. There are clearly a number of issues with this turn of events, all of which served to overshadow what was a superb maiden European Tour win for Jbe Kruger.

Whilst it is reasonably fair to pour scorn on the, as yet, nameless individual(s) who took the time out of their clearly hectic schedules to contact the Tour about Whiteford's heinous act of rule-breaking, the basic underlying issue appears to have been overlooked amid the tidal wave of sympathy for Whiteford.

Whiteford, when coming to play his shot, saw that something wasn't quite right. Perhaps the logo (or his personal markings) on the ball looked slightly different, or maybe said logos/markings became visible at address when previously they weren't. Whatever exactly happened to the ball, something sparked the question in Whiteford's head, 'Has that ball moved?'

As we have seen with previous instances of TV viewer 'contributions' (Padraig Harrington in Abu Dhabi, for example), Whiteford wasn't 100% certain whether the ball had moved or not. His initial, I am led to believe, normal, reaction was to turn to his playing partner, caddy and a nearby TV cameraman to enquire whether the ball had indeed shifted. 

Now, I am no caddy, and I am as far away from being a pro golfer as I am from being Prime Minister, but I would be very surprised if his caddy would have been expected to be looking at the ball at that precise time. If I was a pro golfer, I would want my caddy ready and waiting to sight the ball as it (naturally) steamed off the clubface, tracing a relentless arc towards the waiting pin, not looking at the ground to check if my ball was static. And that doesn't begin to ask how close the caddy would need to be standing to me in order to be see it properly!

As far as the playing partner was concerned, I was always under the impression that the most successful golfers played in their own zone and therefore Whiteford's partner on the day would surely have been concentrating on his next shot, as opposed to looking at the ground to check if his ball was static.

In either case, Whiteford accepted their assertions as gospel that the ball hadn't moved, put to the back of his mind the little niggle that the ball had moved, finished his round, signed his card and went for a beer. Or something like that.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing - I am sure Mr Whiteford will replay the final minutes of Saturday's round over and over in his head for some time - but rather than targeting the dullard who called it in and the Tour for DQing him, Whiteford has to take the full and final responsibility for the outcome. He has received bucketloads of sympathy through Twitter, various blogs and the mainstream media, a large divot of which is quite undeserved.

The key issue for me is that, deep-down, on the balance of things, Whiteford probably knew that the ball had moved - why else would he have bothered to ask his nearby colleagues? His pretty significant balls-up was not raising it with the referee. There would have been plenty of opportunity to check back through TV footage before signing his card and handing it in. All he had to do was ask the question and put his mind at rest.

Did he cheat? Absolutely, categorically, 100% no. He didn't actively set out to gain an advantage. Nationality is the only thing he shares with Eliot Saltman, after all.

Did he throw away a Tour victory? Potentially, yes. It was only the end of round 3, after all. It's a massively harsh way of learning a lesson - god only knows what this will do to the speed of play if everyone is going to get officials involved at the slightest uncertainty - but he made a complete horlicks of the situation and missed the golden opportunity to sort it out before the TV viewer had a chance to put down his Kleenex and press 'Rewind'.


The more convoluted side of this equation is the admissability of TV evidence. There is a clear question mark over the fairness of certain players - those of high profile or near the top of the leaderboard - being open to additional armchair scrutiny because more of their shots are broadcast. 

Is it right that the Tour should be able to take action just because that person happened to be on TV at that precise time? Well, at the current time, the 'rulebook' allows this trial-by-television to take place and, until such time as the Tour takes action, this is the world in which the players are living and working. 

They are well aware of that and should err on the side of caution, as we have seen more recently with Ian 'Teflon Hands' Poulter and Rory 'Sandcastle' McIlroy (credit to Luke Donald notwithstanding). 

It would be great if we, the golf-viewing & supporting public, remembered that the (admittedly remarkable) TV coverage we enjoy is there to show us what is going on during the golf tournament, not provide a platform for people to play judge, jury & executioner with someone's career. Until such time that the European Tour catches up with the PGA Tour and outlaws TV viewer 'assistance', this is the way that it is.




I am the Part-Time Golfer