An Awkward Position! (Part 2)

The par 4, 12th hole is a difficult hole and one that I’m sure has caused many people problems over the years, mainly because of a large hidden lake on the right side of the fairway which is right on driver/3 wood range. The fairway to the left of the lake pinches in making it a slightly smaller area to hit but if you lay up short of the water then you leave yourself a long 2nd shot in to an elevated green. I’d been driving the ball fairly well all day so decided to aim at the left side of the water and give it the beans! If I hit it well enough then it might carry the water, but with my draw shape, if I didn’t hit it quite how I wanted to then it would draw back into the fairway, or that was the plan anyway. I hit it reasonably well but didn’t get the right to left shape on the ball meaning that it was heading straight for the water, I could only hope that I hit it well enough to get over. After my allotted 5 minutes of searching, it was decided between ourselves and our opponents that the ball had in fact landed in the water hazard. Unfortunately, Neil’s ball must have taken an awful bounce off the fairway, which was still recovering from a very wet English winter, and was nowhere to be seen. Again, it was decided that it could only have been in the lake as well. Two watery deaths for our Srixon golf balls.

Whilst one of our opponents was deliberating over his shot on the far left side of the hole and Neil was taking his 2 club lengths from the hazard, I was left to agree on a point of entry into the lake with our other opponent. I knew exactly what distant tree I was aiming at on the tee block, so knew exactly where my point of entry into the water was drawing a line directly back to the tee block, the ball didn’t move in the air, it stayed straight the whole way so I took a ball out of my bag and went to take a penalty drop. Before I could drop my shiny new ball, I was informed by our opponent that he thought my point of entry was 10-15 yards further right, which also meant, because of the shape of the lake, it was also 15 yards further back, we deliberated over it for a minute or two but he was adamant. My argument was that, if he was correct, then my ball would have clattered into the trees short of the water, which it didn’t, it was way left of them. His sudden rule knowledge was a bit of a surprise as well, as we were having to talk them both through rules of provisional shots, cart path drops and other rulings that you really should be aware of if you’re playing in a county competition. I could feel my blood beginning to boil and did well to bite my tongue, he knew the course better than I did so I took my drop where he advised it had entered the water just to try and defuse the situation, however, it left me with a much harder shot out of the rough, further away from the green and with a lot of water and some rather tall trees in front of me, tree’s which I’d earlier used to line up my tee shot. We were again giving away a shot on the hole which put some extra pressure on our now third shots, neither of us were able to hit the green so had no choice but to pitch on and try to hole a putt for a bogey but with the shot we were giving to them, they were obviously favourites to win the hole.

Our opponents had both played three and were next to each other on the green about 20 feet away from the hole. One of them marked their ball to one side and they stood and discussed what they were going to do, knowing that they had two putts for the hole. When they were ready to play, one of them proceeded to walk backwards directly down the line of the putt and stand to watch the putt and how it reacted once it was hit, which is against the rules of golf, check rule 14-2b which states “Positioning of Caddie or Partner Behind Ball – A player must not make a stroke with his caddie, his partner or his partner’s caddie positioned on or close to an extension of the line of play or line of putt behind the ball”. Now, I’m a fair person, I’m all for the spirit of the game and up until I’d received a questionable point of entry drop earlier in the hole, the match had been played in a good “spirit”, but that drop bothered me. I’ve been in these positions hundreds of times before and almost every time, I’ve been told, or told someone “Just so you know for next time, you aren’t allowed to do that”, I’m sure many of you reading this have been in the same situation and said or had the same thing said to you. This was different though, I was in a county competition, representing my club and I’m not going to beat about the bush, I wanted to win. I briefly discussed it with my partner and then informed them of the rule break, but they weren’t aware of what the penalty should be, I knew it was loss of hole. We questioned it with their Captain who was watching us off the green, he confirmed the rule breach and that it was in fact a loss of hole. We walked to the next tee and continued our round, now all square through 12 holes.

What then followed was the most uncomfortable and atmospheric 6 holes of my life, our opponents picked up a few “spectators” in buggies and we could hear them discussing the rules breach between them, it was very obvious that we had upset the apple-cart. Their Captain went off to find our Captain who was playing in the group behind us, to inform him of what had happened and asked him to “have a word” with us. We could feel eye’s watching us with everything we did, Neil obviously felt it as well as he said “make sure you don’t do anything wrong at all, as they’ll pull us for it”. It got very frosty, very quickly and was extremely uncomfortable.

As for the match, I birdied the par 4 13th to go 1up, Neil hit a 5 iron on the par 3 14th to a couple of feet and holed the birdie putt to go 2up. Their followers had grown in size and we were both very aware of their presence, unfortunately it would seem to have had a bit of a negative impact on us mentally and we ended up halving the match from being in a strong position with only a few holes left to play. Overall though our club won the match 4-2 so as it happens, our match didn’t really matter.

We’d discussed it with our Captain and had his full support, we knew we had done nothing wrong and had played the game by the rules. We held our heads high and continued as normal having a quick bite to eat whilst watching some football back in the clubhouse. We exchanged pleasantries with our opponents, albeit rather awkwardly, and made our way home.

To be continued….