| FEATURE
Minding
Uncool in KL: Tiger Woods shows his frustration during the final round of last year's CIMB Classic
One’s
Manners Having witnessed the ill-tempered events at August’s Solheim Cup at first hand, Lewine Mair takes a look at the declining standards of etiquette in the professional and amateur codes.
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Lexi Thompson felt that their opponents, Carlotta Ciganda and Suzann Pettersen, had been given a wrong ruling. And one which had worked ridiculously in their favour by the time it had been sorted out. To recap, after Ciganda had hit into a lateral water hazard to the right of the 15th, the referee spent the next 20 minutes wondering where the Spaniard should take her drop. As he pondered, so he looking more and more like a shocked Jean Van de Velde standing in the waters of the Barry Burn at the 1999 Open Championship. Since the boundary of the hazard was distinctly squiggly and the poor fellow simply could not ascertain where the ball had crossed the water, he eventually called for a second opinion. Sad to say that when it came, it was wrong. The moment Ciganda had holed a long putt to walk from the green with an improbable half,
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ou can rest assured that Fred Couples and Nick Price will have been warning their players to mind their on-course manners ahead of this month’s Presidents Cup at Muirfield Village. Andy McFee, a senior referee on European Tour, thought that team captains everywhere would be hot on that particular topic following events in the recent Solheim Cup at the Colorado Golf Club. Not too many would have thought that the female of the golfing species would be in trouble for their conduct. Yet that Colorado week resulted in one top US official being moved to proclaim, “I used to think that the women’s etiquette was better than the men’s, but not anymore.” In truth, there was a mildly hostile feel to the match from the moment that Stacy Lewis and
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The Solheim Cup resulted in one top US official being moved to proclaim, “I used to think that the women’s etiquette was better than the men’s, but not anymore.”
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Dottie Pepper (above) in a heated discussion with a referee at this year's Solheim Cup, which the United States lost; the experienced rules official John Paramor (opposite) feels the etiquette section in the rule book had made too silent an entry when it was introduced in 2008 68
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Lewis and Dottie Pepper, one of the US captain’s assistants, had rounded on the original referee in the full glare of the TV cameras. “It would be better if this was happening in private,” suggested a somewhat uncomfortable commentator. “Not for us it wouldn’t,” roared his colleague, who clearly felt that this on-screen aggravation made for great television. On another occasion, Paula Creamer was patently in a fury when the Europeans gave her a putt as she was about to take the putter back. (One of the Europeans’ caddies had said ‘That’s good’ when he realised that she was only tackling the putt with a view to helping her partner with the line of her birdie attempt.) Creamer’s anger was understandable in that a caddie is not entitled to give a putt, but she would have done better not to be heard shouting on TV. By the same token, it was probably not the best that Charley Hull and Jodi Ewart-Shadoff, the
opponents, were to be seen giggling nervously. Moving on, there was another farce at the 15 – another long wait and all-round irritation – when a second player was inconsiderate enough to hit into the aforementioned ill-defined water-hazard. Paul McGinley, next year’s European Ryder Cup captain, felt a certain sympathy for the Solheim Cup girls in those instances where the rulings had gone awry. However, where Lewis had complained that the elongated goings-on in her match had cost the Americans their building momentum and probably a couple of points, McGinley suspected that the player had hardly helped herself. He cited a salutary lesson he had learned at the start of his college days at San Diego University – the story of how he had rounded on a playing companion from UCLA who had buried his putter in the side of the fourth green. McGinley lost his own concentration in the process and, when he got back to base, he had a telling-off from his coach. The latter told him that the miscreant ways of his playing companion were nothing to do with him, and that he should have remained focused on his own game before reporting the incident at the end. HKGOLFER.COM
McGinley’s main grouse with the Solheim girls concerned the lack of etiquette being shown to the Europeans by those Americans who walked from the greens the moment their own putting was done. What made him doubly aware of the goings-on was that he had shortly before been talking to Tom Watson about the spirit in which the 2014 Ryder Cup should be played. Both had been adamant that the match should retain its edge but never at the expense of good manners and integrity. “The Americans even went on walking off the greens in the singles after they had been lambasted for it over first couple of days,” said the Irishman. “I’d be very disappointed,” he continued, “if any of my team were to behave like that. It’s totally out of order and it’s also counterproductive. You don’t want to give your opponent that kind of ammunition.” Putting practices, for what it is worth, are covered under ‘Etiquette’ in Section 1 of the Rules of Golf under the heading, “On the Putting Green”. Here it states, “On the putting green, players should remain on or close to the putting green until all other players in the group have holed out.” Penalties can be applied where a player “consistently disregards these guidelines”. News travels fast in the refereeing community and John Paramor, one of the world’s most senior referees, was as well-versed as anyone with what had happened at the Solheim when he turned up for the Omega European Masters in Switzerland last month. He had heard so many versions of the rulings at the 15th that he did not want to comment further until he had a clearer picture in his head. Yet when it came to the ‘walking off the greens’ issue, he said that this was not exactly new: he himself had been aware of it in a Ryder Cup context. “Things are starting to get a bit feisty in all these matches and etiquette can suffer – and it's suffering in regular events as well,” he said. Paramor clearly felt that the etiquette section in the book of rules had made too silent an entry when it was added to the publication in 2008. “I wonder what’s happened with it?” he queried. His feeling is that the individual nature of golf, coupled with the vast money at stake, has resulted in the players becoming more and more concerned with what is going on in their little world – and altogether less interested in what is happening to their playing companions. They just don’t want to take on that kind of responsibility. “The whole idea of a player serving as a marker for another is no longer what it was,” said the official, who admitted that there are plenty of professionals who cannot be relied upon to mark down their companion’s score at the end of every hole. HKGOLFER.COM
Going on from there, he agrees with Thomas Bjorn’s assertion that it is not enough for a player to half-know the rules as applied in the case of Stacy Lewis. “You have to know them back to front if you are going to take on a referee,” said Bjorn. The Ryder Cup Dane added, quite freely, that there are players on the European Tour who “don’t know the first thing about the rules and it’s embarrassing. When some of them don’t understand the different regulations between red stakes and yellow ones, you’ve got a problem.” When it was put to Paramor that the decline in standards was probably more noticeable in the West than the East, he was not so sure. It was Paramor who had taken a bit of stick for giving the then 14-year-old amateur Guan Tianlang of China a one-shot penalty for slow play at this year’s Masters. Paramor stopped short of saying that the player had been discourteous and opted instead for the line, “Let’s say he was less than happy.” Others who were on the spot made no secret of the fact that they were taken aback at the sight of a child who was clearly in no mood to be told what to do by anyone, and that he was unutterably slow from the point of view of his playing partners. Guan’s approach will no doubt be copied by the next child which, of course, is the thing with bad manners: they tend to be catching.
Paramor’s feeling is that the individual nature of golf, coupled with the vast money at stake, has resulted in the players becoming more and more concerned with what is going on in their little world – and altogether less interested in what is happening to their playing companions. HK GOLFER・OCT 2013
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