Phil Mickelson abruptly reverses course on controversial US Open rules violation
It looks like someone at the USGA finally got around to changing Phil Mickelson’s diaper, because he’s stopped fussing and calmed down.
Mickelson — who had a meltdown at the U.S. Open last weekend that culminated in him intentionally taking a two-stroke penalty in order to hit a moving ball rather than allow it to end up God-knows-where on the concrete-like greens at Shinnecock Hills — apologized to the USGA and the media via text message on Wednesday morning.
Per Alan Shipnuck at Golf.com, the message was a fairly standard paint-by-numbers media mea culpa.
“I know this should’ve come sooner, but it’s taken me a few days to calm down,” Mickelson wrote. “My anger and frustration got the best of me last weekend. I’m embarrassed and disappointed by my actions. It was clearly not my finest moment and I’m sorry.”
The incident happened on the 13th hole of Saturday’s third round.
Mickelson, after missing a bogey putt and seeing his ball was going to roll off the back of the green, chased it down, struck it once again to direct it back toward the hole. He needed eight shots to get the ball in the hole, and after being assessed a two-stroke penalty for hitting a moving ball, he took a sextuple-bogey 10 on the hole.
In the process, he violated Rule 14-5 of the Rules of Golf, and some said that he should have been disqualified on grounds that blatant and intentional rules violations in other sports tend to lead to their players being ejected from the game.
Sometimes, after all, the letter of the law and its spirit are at loggerheads with each other.
In American football, the rules technically say that a 15-yard personal foul penalty is sufficient for a player trying to cut his opponent’s knees out from under him with a tackle, but fines and suspensions inevitably result from anyone who does that or who throws a cut block below the knees on purpose.
Likewise, in boxing, you can get away with as many as four unintentional low blows, with two warnings and two point deductions, before the fifth one finally sends you to the showers. But come charging out of the corner and aim a haymaker uppercut between your opponent’s legs and you’re not getting the same courtesy.
For Mickelson, the apology was a sharp about-face from the position he’d taken after the round was done, where he told the media to “toughen up” and flipped out at the tournament officials, joining the chorus of pros who asserted that the course was less challenging and more simply sadistic.
Mickelson’s playing partner on Saturday, Andrew “Beef” Johnston, called it a “moment of madness.”
Jordan Spieth, on the other hand, didn’t see the problem with Mickelson’s actions. In his view, the rules say it’s a two-stroke penalty so if you think you can gain more from committing the foul than you would having to hit the ball two more times, it’s a fair trade.
Spieth’s view has a tendency to create more interesting results.
After all, cost-benefit analysis is strategy like anything else. In the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Luis Suarez intentionally used his hands to knock away a shot by Ghana that would have sunk Uruguay. Suarez got a red card and Ghana got a penalty kick.
The Africans then missed the penalty, Uruguay won the match in a shootout, and Suarez was a hero.
When breaking the rules yields a better result than playing fair, sometimes you just have to channel your inner Dick Dastardly. Mickelson can apologize for his attitude, but he has nothing to apologize for on the golf course other than his atrocious play on Saturday.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
