Woods blows his shot at redemption

When I wrote last week about Tiger Woods’s chances of winning his fifth green jacket, and with it his 15th Major championship, I talked a lot about Tiger the man, the ultimate competitor and, most importantly, about the fact the 78th Augusta Masters offered him his first true shot at complete redemption amongst the public at large.

Having spent much of the past couple of years successfully rebuilding his golf game, Tiger came into Augusta with pretty much everything going his way. He had already won three times in five starts on the PGA Tour, he was in a solid relationship and he had regained the official tag as the world’s best golfer.

On top of that, the media were loving the more relaxed Tiger too, and everything pointed to a resumption of winning Majors, something he had not achieved since 2008.

My one worry for Tiger was whether or not he would psychologically get in the way of himself and in the process scupper his chances of winning. Alas, that is in fact what happened to him on Friday evening. What happened on No 15 will go down as an asterisk beside Tiger’s career for ever more.

For the benefit of this argument, I am not going to condemn Tiger for taking an illegal drop in the “heat of the moment” as I am sure his head was truly frazzled at that moment in time. However, Rule 26 is one of the most basic rules in golf.

It is a rule that Tiger should have known very well, along with almost any golfer — or indeed caddie — who has played the game at any competitive level. Where I have a major issue on this subject is that once he signed and submitted his card, his illegal drop immediately became a “disqualification from the tournament” offence.

When Tiger admitted his error in his press interviews after the round, it should have triggered a course of events that were in the best interests of the integrity of the game and not in the interests of Woods and the tournament. In my opinion, this did not happen.

Instead, the ruling committee& ducked behind the new “Harrington” Rule 33-7, designed to protect players like Pádraig Harrington who innocently failed to notice that his ball had moved slightly after he removed his marker on the green in a tournament in Abu Dhabi and was subsequently disqualified for signing a wrong scorecard when the European Tour was alerted to the fact by a TV viewer.

Rule 33-7 was not introduced to protect individuals who move their ball as Tiger did, some two yards in order to set up a better approach shot for himself.

While the conspiracy theorists will gossip, one can not fail to wonder if the decision was not compromised by the fact that Woods’s continuing presence at the tournament, regardless of his finish, represented countless millions of dollars to the TV networks. One hopes the integrity of the ruling authorities in golf are above that.

As for Tiger, he stands condemned as far as I am concerned, not with failing to think quick enough to make the correct decision on Friday, but by not taking responsibility for his incorrectly signed scorecard. He should have fallen on his own sword and disqualified himself with grace. In the process he would possibly have won himself even more friends and the redemption he most desperately seeks.

Instead, by electing to play on behind a “bogus ruling” and offer the lame excuse that he competes inside the rules of golf, he has diminished his status in the game and has opened himself up to repeated sniping and ridicule from his fellow peers.

As for golf’s ruling bodies, as a professional golfer, I am truly ashamed by their stance on this issue.

In making their decision, they showed no respect for everyone competing in the tournament and no respect for the values of the game. They did not honour the spirit of the law and in the process showed little respect for the traditions of the game. Without integrity, why do we have rules at all?