Can someone explain the reasoning behind all of the Z. Johnson's attempted drops during the 1st playoff hole?

basically, he was trying to play the rules to his favor. he dropped, and re-dropped because he was trying to drop at the farthest point of the relief so that the ball would roll back and he would have to stand on the sprinkler head and get ANOTHER clublength of relief, possibly putting him on the fairway. He kept dropping because where he was dropping was actually outside the area where he should have been. they put the tee on the farthest point and it kept hitting the tee, which was outside his relief. Under the rules that's an incorrect drop and he had to drop again.

Anyone has a videolink to what happened?

An invalid drop normally should be retried only once, the second (wrong) drop should be placed at the dropping-point - judging from the question that didn't happen?

jev wrote:

Anyone has a videolink to what happened? An invalid drop normally should be retried only once, the second (wrong) drop should be placed at the dropping-point - judging from the question that didn't happen?

http://www.aussiegolfer.net/2012/07/zach-johnson-drops-ball-again-and-again.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AussieGolfer+%28Aussie+Golfer%29


normally that would be the case but it was the way this drop was invalid. he kept pretty much just dropping it outside of the club zone and hitting his tee. The marshall is right there going drop there! and he kept hitting the dang tee outside the zone. If it was dropped fairly and BECAME invalid, that's one thing, but it was an illegal drop per se, but not something that warrants penalty strokes.

Thanks for the link. Interesting case. As far as I can see, first drop for the water hazard, than for the sprinklerhead. The dropped ball hit the tee (twice no less, try that once!), which is cause for the redrops. And once for a ball that rolls forward?

If Player told this, we would not have believed him

Hitting the tees (twice) with the dropped ball was not in itself a problem. The referee determined that the tee was situated just outside the 1 clublength limit.
The time when the drop missed the tee it apparently rolled nearer the hole than its original position by the sprinkler head.

There are suggestions that the referee got it wrong because some are suggesting that the tee was actually within the 1 cl limit and the ref was thinking that the tee was equipment!

This might give a better view

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnxdES352J4

Rulesman wrote:

Hitting the tees (twice) with the dropped ball was not in itself a problem. The referee determined that the tee was situated just outside the 1 clublength limit. The time when the drop missed the tee it apparently rolled nearer the hole than its original position by the sprinkler head. There are suggestions that the referee got it wrong because some are suggesting that the tee was actually within the 1 cl limit and the ref was thinking that the tee was equipment!

There was never a time when it missed the tee until the last drop, just to settle the blog debates elsewhere. I've seen this argument in a couple other sites on my random travels through the internet. The first drop (after the initial drop ) the ball hit the tee. The definition of equipment does explicitly exclude tees when talking about marking the position of a ball to be dropped. The first drop was actually a legal drop. The ball hit the tee and rolled to the right, within a club length and not nearer the hole. Zach should have played the ball as it lay there. When watching the video Zach clearly places the tee about 1/2 or so inches INSIDE the grip of the driver.

All the other drops were for outside the area as the marshall moved the tee from its original spot. I never bothered to look at the definitions myself, but you bring up a good point. I think i may take notice of this in the future. I'm always wary of where i put my tee so this doesn't happen and drop within the limit of my club. I think in the future i may be a little less worried about where that tee is, as if ZJ's original drop after relief from the sprinkler was indeed called fair, he'd have had a much better and easier shot from the fairway than what he ended up with.

Thanks. I couldn't quite wrap my head around the whole process. It seemed to me that ZJ was intentionally dropping on his tee. I know he questioned the rules official after the first drop for relief from the sprinkler head. I just didn't understand why, and the announcers just chuckled and said the official was probably right, with no further explanation.

Rulesman wrote:

the ref was thinking that the tee was equipment!

You got me thinking and thus I looked it up. The tee indeed is no equipment in this case. Hmm... it looks like the ref was wrong after all...