Q. Duffy did not say anything critical of anybody, but he did continue to say he did disagree --
MARK RUSSELL: Absolutely. We had an excellent discussion down there. You're exactly right. This is a gentleman's game. And Duffy Waldorf is indeed a gentleman. To tell you the truth, we looked at every way we could get Duffy out of this. But looking at the picture, he physically steps up and eliminates the irregularity in front of his ball. We just didn't see any way we could get him out of it.
Q. I know this has happened before, but can you talk generally about the idea of a fan or whomever being able to watch television, call in and affect a rule posthoc. There is nothing like this in any other sport, obviously. At what point -- can someone call in a day later and affect that?
MARK RUSSELL: A day later, the competition would be closed.
Q. Clearly no one is seeing anything live. Is that a good thing for the game?
MARK RUSSELL: Golf is not like the other games. Golf is the only game that more is better. The less strokes you have, everything else is more runs. It's a totally different game. We operate in facts. It doesn't really matter how you find out. It is the fact, did this or did it not happen. It doesn't matter how you're alerted to that fact.
99.9 percent of the people that call in, basically when I talk to them, I don't know what they're talking about when they talk about the rules. Jeff Hall called down here from USGA and talked to Steve Rintoul. It seemed like he knew what he was talking about, so we went and took a look at it. There's many times we've looked at things and it's just a waste of time. We, as a committee, if something like that is reported, it's our responsibility to look into it.
Q. If he violated a rule, do you think anything he did had an affect on his shot or the way he played it?
MARK RUSSELL: Probably not. I think he just did that as a nervous reaction.
Q. He didn't do it intentionally, obviously, but do you think --
MARK RUSSELL: He did do it intentionally, but I don't think it was bothering him. I don't think it was bothering him, no, I don't.
Q. It's more like taking a --
MARK RUSSELL: It was more of a nervous reaction.
Q. -- fixing a ball mark on the green kind of thing?
MARK RUSSELL: He was ready to play. The cart came by. He stepped up and tapped it down.
Q. Does it make it more interesting -- not interesting, but that you have to choose whether to approach him there in the 16th fairway because he still has the right to discuss it with you, and in theory he could still not get the penalty, or basically had it already been decided?
MARK RUSSELL: Well, once we looked at it, I didn't think there was any way we could get him out of it. I wish there was. We got the whole committee together. And we all discussed it at length on how we could. It is a gray area. But in this situation, the committee just applied the rule.
Q. (Inaudible)?
MARK RUSSELL: The PGA TOUR rules committee, yes. There were 5 of us involved in this.
Q. All rules officials?
MARK RUSSELL: All rules officials, yes.
Q. Was it unanimous?
MARK RUSSELL: It was unanimous. Like I said, we discussed, is there any way we can get him out of this. Duffy knows, I told him, I said, Duffy, this isn't real pleasant for us, but our job is to uphold the rules of the game, protect the other competitors in the game and Duffy just made a mistake.
Q. Could the rule use some fine-tuning?
MARK RUSSELL: It's a good rule. It was just a very fringe thing Duffy did. You can't improve your line of play doing those things.
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