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ALSTOM OPEN DE FRANCEJune 30, 2011Andy McFeePARIS, FRANCE STEVE TODD: Just introduce Andy McFee for those of who you don't know, Chief Referee of The European Tour. Andy, there's four players disqualified, I'll just run through them, Damien McGrane in group 2, group 6, Rikard Karlberg and Jaco Van Zyl and in group 12, James Ruebotham. And if you could just start by explaining the process of why they were disqualified. ANDY McFEE: Sure. It appears they all hit the ball into the lake at 18, and then advanced forward from the last point of their entry to the dropping zone. And in three of the cases, one guy certainly said he knew the local rule we had in place and just got it wrong. The other three, obviously just got it wrong and were not aware. So it's an awkward hole to mark, the 18th, and we have marked it different ways over the years that we have been here, but this is marked exactly the same this year as it was last year. There is no difference whatsoever. And we need a dropping zone up at the top end of the hole, obviously for a ball which crosses the green-side margin, and comes back into the lake. That's a big lake and sometimes you've got nowhere to go, so I cannot get away without a dropping zone there. And the issue is, we have put a green stake in, and the local rules are very clear. It says at the 18th hole, the dropping zone can only be used if the last point of entry is beyond the green stake, and it's also, as you can see, it stands out in big, coloured letters. We also put in a rules advisory which says exactly the same thing. This was put up on Monday, the registration, players' lockers, players' lounge. So we have circulated this widely and we operated under this exact rule last year. So I'm a little bemused at what's happening today. Q. We've seen a third in which actually varies from the one that was handed out to the one that's stuck up in the hallway. What was the word, it said -- "is only an option if." It's not exactly the same wording. ANDY McFEE: I can't say I've seen that, but it sounds like it says exactly the same thing. Q. No, it doesn't say exactly, and this is what we've been told is causing the confusion. I've written down -- ANDY McFEE: Please tell me. Q. I'm not sure -- it says: "A dropping zone for the water hazard at the 18th hole can only be used an additional option if the last point of entry is beyond the green stake." ANDY McFEE: That's exactly what I've got. Q. But it's not -- on the sheet of the paper the caddies are carrying, the wording is different. ANDY McFEE: What sheet are they carrying? The additional option is in the point above, but it says exactly the same thing. It does not change the meaning at all. Q. It seems that it read more clearly on the sheet than on the notice. ANDY McFEE: The dropping zone for the water hazard at the 18th hole can only be used as an additional option if the last point of entry is beyond the green stake. I mean, to me, it's clear, very clear. Q. How many players were disqualified from the event last year? ANDY McFEE: Zero. Q. And what do you think there's been four, there's likely to be more this afternoon? ANDY McFEE: Well, I would hope not. I've now moved Pascal's position. He was over covering 15, 16, 17, 18. He's now currently just sitting on the 18th. Q. Is that fair to the guys who have already played? ANDY McFEE: Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes we have a referee on a hole. Sometimes we don't. I'm actually quite comfortable with it. Q. Pascal advising them about the situation? ANDY McFEE: If he sees anybody getting it wrong, he will stop them but he won't be advising them beyond that. Q. Players have the option to call a referee. ANDY McFEE: Absolutely. It's never relevant where the ball lies in the water hazard. It's always, always the last point of entry that's the key. And if you're advancing 60 yards up the fairway then something has got to tweak in your brain, look, is this right. And that really is the purpose of the green stake. Players don't notice the changeover between a red line and a yellow line. But a great, four-foot high green stake placed there from Monday through all the practise rounds, I'm sorry, something's got to tweak there or just read the local rules and when it's in big, bold print like, that it's there for a reason. It's for people -- for it to stand out. And when we put this on players lounges -- we have circulated this very widely, so I'm a little bemused right now as to why this is happening. Q. Did you do exactly the same thing last year? ANDY McFEE: Exactly. Q. Notices up? ANDY McFEE: Yeah, exactly. Q. So they can use the drop zone if they want to in previous years -- ANDY McFEE: Prior to that we had two drop zones, and we had one further back, and one further forward. But that I discarded because that creates a different problem. If you have a player who rightly goes to the first drop zone, the drop zone which is nearest to his point of entry and he then -- he then hits it into the lake, and I observed this with one of the last three matches two or three years ago, he then hits it into the lake and now his point of entry is much further up. It's a natural thing to do to just drop a ball again in the drop zone in which you are currently standing. Unless that's dropped in exactly the same place and there's a significant chance it won't be because players are quite used to using any point in a dropping zone, then he's now dropping in the wrong place again because he's using the wrong drop zone. So that was a trap waiting for the players which I did not like and I thought, well, I'm going to get rid of that. But all of these things are dependent on people reading the local rule, and I actually think whichever one you look at it, it says exactly the same thing. Q. The drop zone, how far ahead of the green stake is the drop zone? ANDY McFEE: 15 yards. Q. So there's no advantage to hit it in the water and go forward. ANDY McFEE: No. Q. Can I just go back to what we said early on, that of the four, one said he had not read it and the other three misinterpreted? ANDY McFEE: One said, oh, I did know about that rule, but I just got it completely wrong, so he did know. He had obviously read the thing. And the others, I think two of them said they weren't aware of it, which you know, if the players are not going to read the local rules, then they must instruct the caddies to read it. This is crucial. I mean, all of these things are important. Q. How did this all come to light? ANDY McFEE: Well, it came to light to me, because David Probyn rang me and said that he was dealing with two guys who had finished their rounds and were in the players' lounge, and they must have been talking to other players, and said, well, in the drop zone -- well, you can't do that. So they then went to David and when you go and look at it, then it's a serious breach and then of course I think when two people got disqualified, another two players reviewed what they had done, and they came to us, as well. Q. So they weren't pushed by anyone else, they just put their hands up? ANDY McFEE: I would imagine that's exactly what's happened because that's what players do in these circumstances, if they have got it wrong. Q. Is this the only tournament that uses a green stake? ANDY McFEE: No, no, we have done it on a number of places. I'm racking my brain to think where now but certainly at some of the Majors, it's common. We've certainly done it on a number of places. Q. The Belfry -- ANDY McFEE: Well, the 18th at The Belfry is another hole we've marked many different ways over the years. And they have all got their merits, they have all got their problems. It's like the double drop zone, one of the referees just talked to me and said maybe we can solve this by having a double-drop zone. And I've done, that we've actually done, that and we got away with that one because we didn't have any issues, but when I spotted what the potential issue was, I thought, no, I don't want to mark it like that. The 18th at The Belfry is another hole which is difficult, very difficult to mark. And it all revolves around, you've got to use your last point of entry. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to make sure that a player does not get a massive advantage from being able to advance to a drop zone. The 15th is another hole here which is very difficult to mark, and we are accepting that a player can advance a little bit to the drop zone there because that's far better than the alternative, which is the issue there is, you drive down off the elevated tee on to the fairway and then you have the lake in front of you and you have a change over point from red to yellow, and you can use the drop zone if you cross the yellow line. And it is possible. 99 per cent of balls that go into that lake are hit in with the second shots. But it is possible, just, to get the drive wrong and hit it so far that you run out of fairway and into the yellow hazard and that ball could advance to the drop zone but again he's advancing maybe ten, 15 yards max. And I figured, we'll live with that, because that's better for the vast majority of players who hit it into that lake, and they then just go immediately to the drop zone that they see there. That's a natural thing to do. I understand that. But the 18th, the drop zone is potentially 50 to 60 yards in advance of where some of these guys would have been hitting it in. Q. Do you think you'll stick to this situation on the 18th? ANDY McFEE: To be honest, I was quite comfortable with it last year and as we are sitting here I'm still quite comfortable with it. And I'm very disappointed that four players got disqualified. And you're always racking your brain to think, could I have done something different which would have avoided this. But I'm sitting here racking my brain to think what else I can do. And short of the guys actually reading what we put out in front of them, I don't know. Q. Is green a good colour for that stake? ANDY McFEE: I think it is. I can't use white. I can't use red. I can't use yellow. And you know -- and again, it's the size of the stake. It's not a four or five-foot stake by accident. That was put there deliberately and that stake has been sitting under Pascal's bed for the last 12 months. We had it made specifically for this hole and the idea was to have it in position for the practise rounds. So if nothing else, players could walk past it and think, well, what's that there for, and then we have all of these notices on their lockers in the players' lounge. I really feel that we as administration are dealing with a tricky problem here on 18, and we have done our best to put all of the information out in front of the players. We had 78 players play this morning and we have had four disqualifications, so that's 74 people that have played the hole without any problem. And we'll have to wait and see this afternoon. Pascal is not going to be there all the time because if he gets called for rulings on 15, 16 and 17, that's where he's going to have to go and I don't have enough referees to place a referee on every single hole. Q. Did you have to do that at 18 -- I know it went in the water but I can't remember where he dropped. Because he might have used that rule -- ANDY McFEE: I would have been right there on the fairway with him when he did that. You know, the green stake was there, so it depends where he crossed, but if you hit it down the centre of that fairway off that tee and the pin is on the left, the likelihood is you are not going to cross that green stake and that green stake, we have positioned that fairly carefully. And I can't not have a drop zone because a ball that goes in over the far side of the green, I want all the balls that go into water to be treated the same and I don't want somebody who goes in just short of the bridge to be coming in back across the water and having a 50-, 60-yard pitch and somebody else having it go to the other side of the bridge, and then that's marked red and he can drop virtually on the edge of the green. I don't consider that to be fair. So that's why we want to treat that the way that the rules say you can treat the island green. We want to treat every ball the same there. Q. The new rule came in this year as a result of what happened to Padraig -- ANDY McFEE: Yes. Q. -- that said it's not sacrosanct to sign your card -- if you can go back -- ANDY McFEE: Correct. Q. -- could that have come in today? ANDY McFEE: No, it's not an option. There is a significant amount of misunderstanding of this, but I'll read you the relevant part of the press release, which was put out. This is absolutely key in this, because this rule is all about when a player is not aware he has breached a rule, because of facts that he did not know and could not reasonably have discovered. And it actually stresses, it says, "In reviewing this decision, the R&A and the USGA confirm that the disqualification penalty still applies for scorecard breaches that arise from ignorance of the Rules of Golf." And it was one of the major debates that we had in getting to this point with the R&A and the USGA. Obviously there's a number of examples but the Camilo Villegas example in Hawai'i where he moved a loose impediment whilst his ball was still in motion. And that came to light because of a viewer phone-in. But the real crux that have problem was this Camilo did not know it was a breach of the rules to move a loose impediment when the ball is in moving when that ball was in motion. Now that's got nothing to do with television evidence or otherwise. The crux of the problem there was that he didn't know the rule and that's the issue here. There's nothing in this that I can apply to waive a disqualification, because in each case, the player just has got the local rule wrong. He's got the procedure wrong for the water hazard, and because of the point of entry, should have been considerable way back up the fairway as to go into the drop zone that has to be a serious breach. Q. Can I ask if you would read, the current mistake is actually relevant if you read the rule? ANDY McFEE: Yeah, that's right. The stake could be -- nondescript. It could be just a wooden stake. If you read the rule. Q. Read the rule is what they should have done. ANDY McFEE: Correct. The point entry, the rule is eminently fair and to me it's perfectly logical because you want the drop zone to be limited. You don't want somebody to be using a drop zone when they could be advancing 40, 50 yards up the fairway. That just does not make sense and that's what we want to avoid. Q. Are there other consequences for those four players? ANDY McFEE: No, none at all. Disqualification is pretty serious by itself. You know, they just got it wrong, that's all. Q. The key is that the players must read the notice themselves. Some get their caddies to do it? ANDY McFEE: I'm aware of that. You know, my line has always been that players spend hours and hours on the practise round trying to save one shot, well, five minutes in the rule book can have exactly the same effect. Reading the local rules on the first tee is quite -- I think it's quite important. Local rules are just that. They are the rules which apply to this locality and they do vary by nature. We are on different golf courses every week and they have all got different challenges and particularly where you've got an 18th hole, it's an awkward one to mark and you could mark this three, four, maybe five different ways and we probably have over the 20 years that we have come here. But over the last few years, I felt -- I'm very comfortable with the way that we are marking the 15th and besides these four, which I'm obviously not comfortable about, I actually think it's not a bad way of marking the 18th hole. We obviously review everything. But sitting here right now, you know, I thought long and hard before we did this, but I still think it's quite a good solution. Q. So explain -- to go left of the green and post -- or right of the green -- ANDY McFEE: No, that's pretty much it. But the left and right will vary depending on where the pin goes each day and whether the pin is on the left-hand side, then because of the angle of the water where your last point of entry is if you don't carry the far margin, it's always going to be a considerable way back and you're left with pretty much the same shot again that you had before. If the point of entry is beyond the other side of the green stake, and to be honest, the only way you can do that with a pin on the left is if you miss the fairway off the tee and lay up, and then you're hitting a wedge across the water and the drop zone is going to be your option there. Or, you go over the green, hit it long and you go into the yellow hazard behind the green and clearly your point of entry is well beyond the green stake there rather than having to drop on the crowd side of the hazard, you can come back to the drop zone as an additional option. And in all cases whenever drop zones are used it's always as an additional option. In water hazard cases it's never mandatory. It's always as an additional option. Q. So shall we expect an official statement? STEVE TODD: This is what we're doing here. Q. The three players who didn't really know what they were doing, did they take it in good grace? ANDY McFEE: I haven't actually spoken to them yet. It was dealt with by one of the other referees but I believe so, yes, I think they all know that when shown the local rules, I think they just closed their eyes and said, yeah, okay. I think that's the root of this. Players have to read and understand the local rules. And we know that that doesn't always happen. That's why we put out notes like this, and pull out -- you know, we could have used, well, you put that out there, why didn't you put something else out there and then we go back to, just read the local rule. Q. Are they advised on first tee to read it? ANDY McFEE: We have done that. We have done that over the years. We make sure they have a copy of the local rules. There's a limit to what we can do. So, you know, now Ivor doesn't say to the guys, look, read this. We advise them always to read the local rules. But I don't know. Q. That question was asked because they are now told that you exchange your card -- that is in one way, the hand is held. ANDY McFEE: Yeah, the hand is held a bit. But somewhere along the line, responsibility has to be taken. Q. And you get four this morning -- ANDY McFEE: It is. I knew it was a possibility because I'm aware that people don't read a lot of the stuff that we put out. But I knew it was a possibility last year and we had zero. Zero. So I could maybe have understood it more if this was the first year of the local rule but it's not. It's many years since we had drop zones on the 18th, as I say, for a number of years, we had two drop zones, but the trap that that created, I actually thought that was worse and that's why I got rid of that one. STEVE TODD: Thanks, Andy. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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