He wins, he loses, he wins. No one really knows what makes Bubba Watson, the Genesis Open champion, tick, and the truth is, he might not, either.
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A new year has brought changes to the Rules of Golf. The Rules are revised every four years, and the changes that took effect Jan. 1 are the first since the major overhaul of 2019. There are fewer changes this year, but they continue the trend of simplifying the game and reducing the number of head-scratching penalties that send social media ablaze. With this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions being the first PGA TOUR event played under the most recent revisions, here’s a quick look at the changes that could come into effect during PGA TOUR competition. 1. Ball at rest rolls to another area of the course after being dropped or placed If a ball is at rest after being dropped, placed or replaced and then natural forces cause it to roll to another area of the course, it must now be replaced. There is no penalty. This rule comes into effect when the ball rolls into a penalty area, into a bunker, onto a putting green or out of bounds. This change was made by the governing bodies in response to the situations that impacted Rickie Fowler and Charley Hoffman at the WM Phoenix Open, where a ball at rest after a player took relief rolled back into a penalty area. Under the old rule, this resulted in a one-stroke penalty for each player. Fowler’s situation happened in the final round of his victory at the 2019 WM Phoenix Open, after he hit his third shot into the water on TPC Scottsdale’s 11th hole. He took a drop outside the penalty area, but his ball rolled back into the water while he was surveying his next shot. He was penalized another shot and then had to take relief again. Fowler eventually made a 17-footer for triple-bogey, but still went on to win the tournament. Under the new rule, Fowler would not have been penalized for his ball rolling back into the water after he had taken a drop. He would have been allowed to replace his ball without penalty. 2. Unsigned scorecard A Local Rule will be adopted on the major Tours that reduces the penalty for returning a scorecard without the signature of the player and/or marker from disqualification to two strokes. The penalty will be applied to the final hole of the round. The hole scores recorded in each box on the scorecard must still be correct. 3. Committee-approved yardage books A Committee-approved yardage book from either 2022 or 2023 may be used in competition this year. The Committee-approved yardage books were introduced in January 2022 as part of a Local Rule that limited the amount of information about a green’s contours allowed in yardage books. Greens diagrams in the approved books show minimal detail about a green. The Local Rule also limits the handwritten notes that players and caddies can add to their approved yardage books. 4. Setting down objects to help with aiming or line of play An object must not be set down to help a player take a stance for a stroke, aim a shot or to show the line of play. For example, a penalty applies as soon as a towel is placed down to show a player the line of play for a blind shot. Laying down a club for alignment purposes while addressing the ball is still illegal. This year’s rule emphasizes that drawing lines in dew or sand to aid in alignment are also illegal. Under the previous rule, a player could set down an object on his line of play to help aim before attempting a blind shot, but it had to be removed before he started his stroke. Now an object cannot be set down at any time to assist with aiming a shot. A caddie can still assist his player with aiming by standing in a player’s intended line before the stroke begins, provided he moves away before the player begins his stroke. 5. Back-on-the-line relief procedure The procedure for taking relief back-on-the-line has been simplified. Back-on-the-line relief is an option for an unplayable ball and also is a commonly-used option for relief from penalty areas. It allows a player to drop back on a straight line from the hole through the spot where the ball lies. The player must now drop a ball on the line. Once the ball is dropped on the line, it may roll up to one club-length in any direction from that spot, including closer to the hole. 6. Distance measuring devices in pro-ams As it is a common practice in the game of golf today, amateurs and their caddies will be allowed to use distance measuring devices during competition at The American Express and AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. However, the professionals and their caddies cannot get advice from a distance measuring device or greens book used by an amateur or their caddie during these tournaments.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Brandt Snedeker’s daughter Lily came running down the stairs, full of excitement, on Tuesday morning of last week. It was her ninth birthday. A special day. Cake and ice cream was on the horizon along with ribbons and bows and presents. But as soon as she looked at her parents, Lily could tell something was wrong. Snedeker had been awake since about 4 a.m. when his phone started blowing up with text messages from friends and family. Were they OK? Had the brutal storms and tornadoes that roared through Tennessee in the wee hours spared them? “My wife and I were both just in shock,â€� he recalled Wednesday before heading out to play a practice round for THE PLAYERS Championship. “My little girl came downstairs. She was so excited because it’s her birthday. She turned nine and she’s like, ‘What’s wrong? Why aren’t you guys excited?’ We started showing her pictures, turned the news on and she realized oh gosh, this is really serious. “We started getting reports of how many people … I think 24 is the final total of people that had passed away from that. And that’s when it hits you. The stuff people lost; our city will recover. It’s the people who can’t recover, right? The people that lost their lives, it really hits you. … It was a tough day.â€� Surreal was another word Snedeker used, more than once, during the interview outside the massive clubhouse at TPC Sawgrass. The Snedekers live south of Nashville and were spared any damage. But they had friends who were hard hit, and the city where he was born and still resides will be in recovery mode for a long, long time.  “It was so sudden, so quick,â€� said Snedeker, whose G/FORE golf shoes will display the words: Nashville Strong this week. “It was not a big storm. Didn’t feel like it was one of the ones you really had to worry about. Then you wake up to the devastation we saw, and you realize that in a blink of an eye, everything changed for a lot of people.â€� Schools were reduced to rubble but thankfully, no lives were lost in those classrooms because the EF-3 tornado hit at night. Too many businesses and homes to count were destroyed, particularly in the East Nashville area, an up-and-coming neighborhood filled with trendy restaurants and the kind of cool stone houses people love to renovate. “What was crazy about it is you’d have one side of the street that was leveled, one side the street, not,â€� Snedeker said. “The randomness of the tornadoes is really hard for people to kind of take and grasp. From there, it just stayed on the ground forever. “And probably the worst images you’ll see are from Cookeville, Tennessee, which is about an hour east of town, where it just literally looked like a bomb went off. I mean it was severe damage and these are all brick homes, beautiful homes that just got leveled and so it’s going to be a long recovery effort.â€� In the short term, Snedeker is trying to help his friends get back on their feet. The roof to one’s apartment was blown off, the family’s belongings a total loss. So was their car in the garage under the apartment building. “They luckily made it out, but they lost everything inside,â€� Snedeker said. “Single mom that we’ve known forever. You hear those stories and you’re like, okay, I want to help her. I know her personally. We’re going to get her back and going. “But then you think about all the people I don’t know that have had something similar happen. What can we do for them?â€� Snedeker is trying to figure that out right now. He knows there’s an influx of people who have been doing the grunt work, clearing roads and property with chain saws, replacing roofs and drywall. Hotels have opened their doors to the displaced. People have donated water and clothes and food. “I was really kind of buoyed by that, knowing that Nashville is a community, we do care about people involved in it,â€� Snedeker said. “So, for me it’s been hard kind of figuring out where I fall in with this, how can I help? What can I do? It’s easy to write a check and just say, ‘Here you go, here’s a bunch of money.’ And go to the people you want. “I think we want to do more than that. I want to do more than that. The thing with these kinds of disasters is everybody gets really excited about them or wants to help out, over enthusiastic probably the week after. Then three months down the road, that’s when people really need you. So, we’re trying to figure out the best way to say, okay, how can we service people three months down the road who still don’t have a home, still don’t have a car, that need a job because their business place got lost, whatever it may be?â€� The Brandt and Mandy Snedeker Foundation that he and his wife started after he won the 2012 FedExCup is sure to be involved. Maybe they hold a charity golf tournament. Maybe they partner with some of Nashville’s many entertainers to raise funds for the relief. No matter what, they’ll find a way to make an impact. Snedeker said the celebration for his daughter’s birthday went on that night as scheduled. But it was muted after a day filled with a such a sense of sadness, mourning even. “You had a sickness in your stomach all day,â€� he said. “You couldn’t believe. You kept thinking it wasn’t real, and then you’d see the pictures coming online and you see people just lost everything. Everybody’s faces when you walked around town that day … it just looked like everybody was drained. “It’s still that way a little bit. There was a sense of pride afterwards, seeing everybody come together and get downtown and do some good work and try to help people get back. But it’s a long process. It’s such a long process. You see pictures of all these volunteers working all day long. “There’s no finality to it. Still a lot more to do, still a lot more rebuilding so it’s going to take that sustained effort over months and months and months to get back to here we need to be.â€�
Former champion Adam Scott gave early bird fans at The Honda Classic a thrill when he stripped off his shoes and pulled off a stunning par save from the water at PGA National. Scott's approach shot on the par-4 11th hole - his second of the round - found itself drifting right from his line and came down short and in the water hazard. But with the ball only partially submerged Scott decided to attempt to play it from the wet muddy lie - local alligators be damned! RELATED: Affect of water balls on Florida Swing "I blocked my 7-iron and when I got up there I figured I could play it, but I called in a rules official because incredibly there were some electrical cables in the penalty area around my ball that I needed to move," Scott explained to PGATOUR.com. "I was able to move them, get my shoes and socks off, roll the trousers up, get my waterproof jacket on and get in the water with my lob wedge. From there I just played it like a full bunker explosion shot and got it to about 12-feet." For a split second it looked like the veteran might overbalance on his follow through and go for a swim, but he showed great poise to stay relatively dry. Scott then converted the 11-foot, 10-inch par putt - a critical save given he'd already bogeyed his opening hole. "It took a little bit of time to get the pond mud off me but was certainly nice to make the putt. Easy par right?" he smiled. Scott is familiar with the water around the course having won the trophy in 2016 despite making a quadruple bogey with two water balls in the third round. He also entered this week tied with Hideki Matsuyama having the most water balls (11) of the 2021 Florida swing thus far. Thankfully for the 16-time PGA TOUR winner his 12th wet shot in the last few weeks didn't hurt him on the scorecard and he eventually signed for a steady 1-under 69. "You can survive hitting it in the water once or maybe twice for a tournament," Scott said Tuesday. "The experience of playing these Florida golf courses for 20 years, it’s inevitable you’re going to hit one in the water, especially around here when it’s windy. You’re going to have to accept it and do the best you can to get past that hole and rebuild." Scott wasn't the only player to get his gear off at the 11th on Thursday. Sebastian Cappelen also found himself in a similar predicament and decided to attempt the shot sans shoes and shirt. The bare-chested Dane - who did find the green but was unable to convert his par putt - brought back memories of former FedExCup champion Henrik Stenson playing a shot from the water at Doral in 2009 in his underwear. The greatest water shot on TOUR though surely must be that of Bill Haas in the 2011 TOUR Championship. In a playoff with Hunter Mahan - with $11.4million on the line - Haas got up and down from the hazard on the 17th hole to stay alive and won the FedExCup a hole later.
