Randall’s Rant: Backstopping needs to be stopped

Tony Finau nearly turned a simmering debate on the PGA Tour into a powder keg Sunday at the Safeway Open. If Finau wins in Napa Valley, this growing suspicion that players are using fellow competitors’ golf balls as “backstops� while pitching and chipping blows up. If Finau wins, the issue wouldn’t easily be dismissed today as a skirmish waged on the game’s fringe by rules geeks and conspiracy theorists. If Finau wins, this debate explodes into a question of whether there really is something calculated in players failing to mark balls that they leave so close to the hole. It erupts into more volatile suspicions that this is becoming an accepted practice that corrupts the spirit of the game. For