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Madelene Sagstrom (left) and Nanna Koerstz Madsen have a tense conversation on the 18th green in their four-ball match on Saturday against Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing in the 2021 Solheim Cup.
Golf record
TOLEDO, Ohio – The Rules of Golf have recently undergone a major rewrite and the updates came into effect in 2019.
The R&A and the USGA wanted to modernize the rules. Organizations saw it as an opportunity to do more good for the game.
In many ways, that’s exactly what they did, because the game is better thanks to the changes – but since it goes along with those things, you can’t always think of everything.
After looking at the rules incident during Saturday afternoon’s four balls at the Solheim Cup, rule 13.3 Ball Overhanging Hole needs a closer look.
Team USA’s Nelly Korda hit an eagle putt on par-5 13e which swung from side to side and stopped so close to the hole that it was not immediately clear if any part of the ball was overhanging the cut.
European Madelene Sagstrom approached the ball relatively quickly, picked it up and sent it back to Korda, who was slumped on the green with emotion, thinking the putt was going to enter.
Under Rule 13.3, if a ball overhangs a hole, the player has a reasonable time to reach the hole, plus an additional 10 seconds, before the ball must be put into the hole.
Related: 2021 Solheim Cup TV Times, Schedule, Past Results
In addition, according to the rules, in match play, if an opponent moves an overhanging ball before the necessary time, the putt is deemed to have been entered.
Using what can only be described as a grainy image of the TV (when zoomed in, the image of the ball appeared pixelated), it was determined that Korda’s ball was overhanging the hole. Her putt was deemed a hole and the Americans won a close match.
Subsequently, Sagstrom insisted that she had not moved a ball that had a chance to enter, and at no time during the incident neither Korda nor her playing partner Ally Ewing did suggested that the ball was overhanging the hole. The rule review was initiated by an official after the match.
The rules often provide for separate penalties for stroke play and match play. The stroke play rules protect the pitch, while the match play rules apply for head-to-head competitions.
Considering what happened on Saturday, I suggest some changes.
First, a ruling request must be initiated by the players participating in the match rather than by an official. If a player believes that a rule has been broken, he must bring it to the attention of the official.
Beyond eliminating any potential bias, this places the responsibility on the player, who must of course know the rules.
Another suggested change for match play is to allow players to ignore a rule violation. Golf is supposed to focus on integrity, and this change would allow a player to be both competitive and compassionate.
Under these suggested changes, Saturday’s rule controversy would never have happened, as none of the US players were aware of an issue.
After the rules manager initiated the review, on several occasions the US players said there was nothing they could do about it because there was nothing they could ignore the rule.
But what if you could?
What if a player could say, “What happened is not a problem for me.”
Think of the action of Jack Nicklaus, when he recovered Tony Jacklin’s 2½-foot putt on the 18e hole in the 1969 Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale, sealing the tie.
Many would have put Jacklin in the putt, but in match play players have discretion to put putts. So why not extend this discretion to other parts of the game?
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