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DUBAI DUTY FREE IRISH OPEN HOSTED BY THE RORY FOUNDATION

July 9, 2017

Andy McFee

Portstewart, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland

Q. Saw you having a conversation with Jon Rahm on the 13th hole about an incident that happened on the sixth green where he marked the ball and appeared to put it back in a different spot. Can you explain to us what happened and why there was no penalty?
ANDY McFEE: Yeah, we got a few e-mails in about it. The initial call that came in actually came from one of the TV watchers we've got here. And I think Richard said on commentary, that for those viewers that were watching, the ball has definitely been put back one putter head length to the side. But the e-mails that came in were on a slightly different topic.

Yeah, the ball was marked and then Jon moved it one putter head length to the side to get it out of the way. When he marked the ball initially, he quite clearly marks it so the side of the ball.

Now it's not exactly 90 degrees to the side, because when I look at it pretty he closely on the tape, I think I can see more of the ball in front of that 90-degree line. So it's off-centre but he knows he's done that. And then when he puts the ball back, it looks like the ball is going back slightly in front of the coin rather than to the side. So then you've got a question, well, has he put the ball back down in the right place.

So I'm looking at this quite minutely and I wanted to get a second pair of eyes on it because it's quite -- we're talking fine margins here. And the reason why there is no penalty is because I think Jon's made a reasonable judgment here.

What I see is I see the ball being lifted from a position which is not at 90 degrees on a marker. So if you put that in relation to the clubface, it's not nine o'clock, as opposed to 12 o'clock. He definitely hasn't marked it at 12 o'clock. He's marked it at, say, ten o'clock.

And then when he puts the ball back down, he definitely hasn't put the ball back down right in front of the ball marker, which would be 12 o'clock. He's puts it down slightly off-centre, and I would say it's a difference between ten o'clock and 11 o'clock. So there's a slight margin.

Now the complicating factor is that when you look at this on the TV screen, you see a lot of the images are -- the hand obscures the exact location of the ball marker, so it's a little bit imprecise in that respect. But secondly we are talking about a player moving his ball marker off to the side to get it out of the way of a fellow competitor and then moving it back again.

Now, there's always going to be a small margin for error for this, and this is where it gets quite technical. Because where is the dividing line. And the new decision that the R&A and USGA crafted, with full knowledge and work from the PGA Tour and ourselves is all about trying to eliminate these fine margins and get to a position whereby if the player has made a reasonable judgment, then the game will accept if it's slightly wrong.

It won't accept if it's wildly wrong, and a lot of it depends on what the player is trying to do, how good a view he's got of what he's doing, and how close he gets back to the original spot.

So I needed to have a conversation with Jon because I needed to have his words of what his memory was of what went on on the sixth green. I got to him when he came off the 13th, and he clearly said to me that he knew he had marked the ball to the side, and both he and Daniel said that while he clearly made an effort to move it back to the side, that tallies with what I'm seeing on the picture.

Because again, we're getting to this very fine margin of, yeah, I don't think the ball was put down in exactly the right place, but I think it falls within the player has made a reasonable judgment to putt it back. So that's why there's no penalty.

Q. Very briefly, it varies from the Lexi Thompson situation because the rule has changed since then to allow for that margin?
ANDY McFEE: I think the margin in the Lexi Thompson would be slightly different to this one. That would maybe be more of the ball replaced to the side and in front of, where this one is -- it's not quite that stark. The difference is not quite that stark.

And also, the big difference is that in this case, you've got an intervening act. You've got the player moving the ball marker off to the side and then moving it back again. That by itself means that the ball is probably not going to go back in exactly the right place.

But has it gone back close enough to its original position for the rules to say there's a reasonable judge many been made by the player here and fall within the limitation of video evidence, which is now there for us all to use? Yeah, it has.

But it's been quite a lengthy process to look at that, which is why I wanted to get a second pair of eyes, not just me.

Q. Was he upset in any way with what you were saying to him?
ANDY McFEE: I don't think so. I said to him, look, I need -- I'm absolutely required to talk to you about this because one of the points in the new decision is that the outcome depends a lot on what the player says and what his explanation of the events were. And it was very clear that Jon said, oh, I knew I had marked it to the side, and then I was trying to make an effort to put it back to the side.

And yeah, he's done that. He's definitely made the effort to put it back, because I say, because it hasn't gone down directly in front of; it's gone down to one side. I describe it as 11 o'clock. For me, we're talking about the difference between the ball being lifted at ten o'clock on the ball marker and being put back at 11 o'clock.

Q. The revision has been made since the Lexi Thompson incident?
ANDY McFEE: Yes, it has.

Q. Because of it?
ANDY McFEE: No, not really because of it. We've got an ongoing review with the rules' bodies right now. It's been going on since 2013, and you all know that the new rules are coming in in 2019, and we've had a few instances of things into that have cropped up where the work we have been doing on that rules review, we're thinking, look, we're so far down the road on this and the game needs it now. The movement of balls on the putting green is a good example of that.

This is another one where the work we have done on the Lexi Thompson incident, we thought, look, we have to have a better base position for the viability of video evidence and the limitation on it. And this is just a way of saying that when the player has made a reasonable judgment and you can look at that and think, well, yes, he's tried to do the right thing. He hasn't got it exactly right, but the rules will accept a small variation.

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