Fuente: © Southern Africa Tour
http://www.sunshinetour.com/

GOLF: SOUTHERN AFRICA TOUR: Humewood’s 17th – Goosen’s hole from hell

/noticias.info/ After 16 holes of near flawless golf in difficult conditions defending champion, Retief Goosen, appeared to be cruising to a comfortable first round lead at the South African Airways Open Championship.

Then he lost a ball. And another and yet, another. And then, for a moment, his head.

On Humewood Golf Club’s difficult par-five 17th Goosen first sliced his drive to the right. He played a provisional and pulled it left, forcing him to play a second provisional, which he sent down the middle with a long iron.

After declaring the first ball lost, Goosen found the second ball, but had to take a penalty drop to put it in play. Which is where his troubles really began.

After dropping, Goosen watched the ball roll a few inches from where it struck the ground. He picked the ball up and re-dropped. Mistake. The Goose required a further three shots to reach the green and two-putts to record what he presumed was a quadruple bogey nine.

But after making birdie on the par-four 18th, senior rules official Andy McFee raced into the scorers’ tent to stop Goosen from signing his card.

“When you declare a ball unplayable you have a number of options, you can go back under stroke and distance, you can keep where the ball lies between you and the hole and go back as far as you like, or you can take the option which Goose took, which is to drop it within two club lengths of where it lies,” McFee explained.

“He took an unplayable ball drop, so he had two club lengths from where the ball lay, and he has to drop the ball within those two club lengths – which he did.

“It then rolled just outside the two clubs lengths and he was under the impression he had to re-drop the ball.

“But you only re-drop the ball if it rolls more than two club lengths from where it strikes the ground. The ball didn’t do that and it didn’t roll nearer the hole so the ball was in play.

“Effectively when it is in play he has no authority to touch it or pick it up. If he only picked it up it’s a one-stroke penalty, but because he didn’t replace it, it was a two shot penalty – a general breach of rule 18.”

“I got to him in the recording area before he signed his card and the nine became an 11.

“As soon as I started talking to him to ask what happened – because it happened so quickly I didn’t have an opportunity to see the tape – there was a kind of a realisation and he nodded and went, ‘yea I got it.’

“He said, ‘that’s an 11 isn’t it?’ and I answered yes. He knew that rule but in the fog of war it escaped him, but as soon as we talked in the recording area he realised and knew his mistake.”

The up side for the Goose is that for 17 holes he played immaculate golf and despite his sextuple bogey was still within two shots of the lead held by Ernie Els, Trevor Immelman, Carl Suneson and Andrew Rait.

This Goose ain’t cooked just yet. notas_de_prensa_archivo