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ANA INSPIRATION

April 2, 2017

Sue Witters

Rancho Mirage, California

Q. Do you know who the e-mail is from?
SUE WITTERS: I didn't look at the name. I just saw that it was an e-mail from a credible source. We always just, doesn't really matter who sends it. It matters that it comes in and we've got to look at it.

Q. When you say "credible source," means you perhaps knew who it was?
SUE WITTERS: I don't know who it is. I don't know the person. I mean, I didn't recognize the e-mail. It just came in in our system.

Q. So you made a decision that it was credible enough to go back and look at the tape?
SUE WITTERS: Well, I look at everything that comes in. Quite honestly when the comment came in about Juli Inkster having a donut on her club and I was like, no way, Juli knows better than that, and I almost didn't go look at that. So that was a real good lesson for me never to ignore anything. The worst thing you can do -- we check out everything that comes to us.

Q. How often do you get an e-mail?
SUE WITTERS: You know, it seems to come in waves. We won't get any and then we'll get a couple. I don't think we've had any the last week or two and then this is the first one this week.

Q. From a time being standpoint, what time did you receive the e-mail and when did you watch television and when did you go out?
SUE WITTERS: The e-mail came in as the last group was on 9. I headed over to the TV compound and I looked at it with another official that was in there and I brought another official in. Had Heather come in and take a look and we were just sick about it.

Q. How long did that process take?
SUE WITTERS: They were getting close to turning when I got over there. We got 12 when --

HEATHER DALY-DONOFRIO: The fact that it's a major championship, we had to make sure that we were certain. We try to move through these things as quickly as humanly possible but you have to be certain. You know, last thing you would want to do is make a call that's not in line with the rules of the game, but we felt like we moved as quickly as we could. We got four eyes on it total on the team.

Q. When you saw what you say was on television, what is the exact rule, the violation?
SUE WITTERS: Well, playing from the wrong place is 20-7 (c) and that was a two-stroke penalty, and because it happened yesterday, she's now signed for an incorrect score and that is an additional two strokes and that's 6-6 (d). It used to be disqualification. Because it would have been she signed for a wrong score, so it would have been a disqualification. They changed that at the beginning of 2016.

Q. In 2019, this is going to go away because there's going to be a reasonable --
SUE WITTERS: There's a number of things that are under discussion right now. Nothing's official. So I really don't, you know, want to comment on anything that's not set in stone yet.

Q. Who did the e-mail come to? Who was it addressed to?
HEATHER DALY-DONOFRIO: It came through LPGA.Com Fan Feedback.

Q. So who would have received that?
HEATHER DALY-DONOFRIO: Our dot-com team.

Q. And they forward it to the rules staff. And how much discretion is there in that? Because really, no one can be perfect, but you could see a difference -- how do you decide whether the ball was put back in the right spot?
SUE WITTERS: Well, you can see with the visual eye, it was probably, I'd say about that much. And you know, the thing is, I'm 100 percent sure it was not intentional. I mean, Lexi is a Class A player.

I don't know; it was late in the day, it had been a long couple of days, but you can clearly see that she has the ball down. She putts the marker behind it, and when the marker is behind it, the ball is on the green and you cannot see any of the marker and when the ball gets put back down, you can see about three quarters of the marker. It's some kind of coin.

Q. Clearly there are people who are already on social media, on Twitter, who are like, well, this is kind of ridiculous or embarrassing or whatever they are saying out there. You took this three-shot lead and turned it into a negative four on a Sunday in a major. Obviously your adherence is to the rules, but do you understand how people are going to respond to this?
SUE WITTERS: Sure, but what's my choice? A violation in the rules and then it would be the opposite story: Oh, they knew, why didn't they do anything about it. I can't go to bed tonight knowing that I let a rule slide.

You know, it's a hard thing to do, and it made me sick to be honest with you.

HEATHER DALY-DONOFRIO: I think for the whole team, any rules team, when you have a situation like this, it's extremely difficult. And it's extremely upsetting for everybody, and this is the last thing that the rules team wants to do.

But their job is to enforce the rules of the game, regardless of who the player is and what the situation is and what the championship is. And it's not always well received when the rules official do their jobs.

But at the end of the day, that's what I hire my team to do is to enforce the rules of the game, and none of us are happy about the outcome. Lexi, as Sue said, is a player of the highest integrity. But we have to, our job is to reinforce and to enforce those rules. We don't like it.

It's a major championship, it's golf's first major of the year, but we acted as quickly as we could, as certainly as we could, notified the players as quickly as we could, and in fairness to them, and you know, at the end of the day, that's what our team did. They had to do their job, and we know that there are going to be people that disagree with that and disagree with the ruling, disagree with the timing, question the timing; we didn't go fast enough; we didn't go slow enough; we didn't go long enough. There will always be fans who will give us that feedback.

But I'm confident in my team that we reacted as quickly as we could. We took it seriously and we didn't rush to judgement and tried to get to the players as quickly as we possibly could.

Q. Someone calls in about a ruling about a Saturday on Sunday, you have time to implement it. If somebody e-mails you tomorrow --
SUE WITTERS: The competition is closed. It's a done deal. So if that call had come in tomorrow or if a call comes in tomorrow, it's over. The competition's closed. The problem was the competition was not closed.

Q. You're still fine with somebody calling and saying, I saw something on TV, whether I have a 56-inch or 12-inch, we don't know --
SUE WITTERS: I believe that's how Craig Stadler was caught, somebody called it in --

HEATHER DALY-DONOFRIO: We consistently review. A lot of times I'm not on site and I'm at headquarters and we get a call and trust me there are times when I say, I don't want to elevate this, I don't want to take the call, why did the receptionist forward it to me.

But it's our obligation to follow up on all of those calls and e-mails, and we do, to protect the integrity of the game.

Q. At THE PLAYERS Championship a few years ago, Justin Rose had a ball that moved but in order to see the ball moving, they had to get a close-up of the golf ball, and he was originally assessed a penalty that was rescinded on Sunday, because they said, you know, it took a close-up camera.
SUE WITTERS: This isn't one of those.

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