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Golf Star Disqualified from Key Tournament After Mom Allegedly Cheats

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Move over, LaVar Ball, there’s a new hover parent in town making a mess of their kid’s sporting ambitions.

At an LPGA qualifying event over the weekend, 25-year-old Doris Chen hit a wayward drive that landed out of bounds on the 17th hole.

Unfortunately for Chen, someone moved the ball, according to LPGA officials — either deliberately or inadvertently –putting its position back within the stakes that marked the limits of the course’s playable area.

Chen then, seeing the ball in bounds, concluded that everything was kosher and hit her next shot.

According to the Golf Channel, a homeowner on the golf course at Pinehurst informed tournament officials that someone had moved the ball and described the responsible party.

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The perpetrator? Chen’s mother Yuh-Guey Lin.

Since Chen did not mark the penalty on her scorecard as the rules dictate, she was disqualified despite at that point, having reached the seventh round of a marathon that grants an LPGA Tour card to the big winners.

Chen had an illustrious beginning to her golf career, winning the 2010 U.S. Girls Junior Championship and the 2014 NCAA individual title when she was at Southern California.

Unfortunately, her career has since plateaued; on the minor-league Symetra Tour, Chen has won just $1,000 in 12 starts.

Will Doris Chen ever find success as a pro golfer?

The LPGA offered an official explanation for the disqualification in a statement.

“An outside agency moved her ball back in bounds. Ms. Chen and her caddie were made aware that the ball had been moved. Doris elected to play the ball, which was a wrong ball by definition, from its altered lie.”

If indeed Chen was aware that the ball had been moved, it does leave open the question why she then decided to hit the shot and furthermore why she did not then, knowing the penalty for doing so, mark said penalty on her scorecard.

Chen had a statement of her own to try to explain her position on the matter.

“I did not have any direct involvement, nor was it my intention for it to happen,” she said, according to Golf.com. “It was a stressful week and I did my best in terms of resolving it at the moment. Unfortunately, I did not have the best judgement at the moment and this resulted a ruling. It was my responsibility as a player to call for a rules official at the time to investigate, whether the event to be true or mistaken. However I thought I knew the rules clearly. I have to firmly clarify that my caddie, the volunteer nor I at the time who were searching for the ball saw anything of suspicious (sic). I did not hear or see anything, nor did I do anything that would interfere. I found the ball and hit it.”

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This creates a curious dispute: Chen claims she heard nothing, while the LPGA says Chen and her caddie were both aware of the infraction at the time the shot was played.

Meanwhile, there is one voice that has been curiously silent on the matter, and if the homeowner’s allegation is correct, she is the one person who truly knows what happened after that errant shot came off Chen’s club.

Yuh-Guey Lin has yet to comment to media or, evidently, the LPGA on the matter.

But with Chen’s winnings at just $1,000 on the year and $12,050 in three years as a professional, the bigger question might be whether full-time consideration of another endeavor might be in order.

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Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Birthplace
Boston, Massachusetts
Education
Bachelor of Science in Accounting from University of Nevada-Reno
Location
Seattle, Washington
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Sports




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