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Protocol...What to do when one player's ball blocks another player's attempt to putt at the hole

• BlondinJDB 46 Posts

  Wed, Mar 13 2013 10:01 PM

  In match play, frequently a putt gets left so your opponent has no decent shot at the hole.  I inadvertently did this to my opponent 6 times in a 18 hole match.  Therefore, my opponent had 33% of the holes with no chance of getting a decent putt.  This is great strategy in pool...but this is golf (a gentleman's game).   In real golf, you ask your opponent to mark the ball...but you can't do that in WGT.  So what's the proper protocol...other than type a "SORRY" chat comment?  Should you:

  1.  Concede the opponent's putt...since you blocked his putting opportunity? 

  2.   Let him play the putt and hope he hits your ball farther from the hole than he ends up?

  3.  Agree to cacel the match...and then both players disconnect?

  4.  Deliberately make bad shots on the next hole and concede your opponent's 1st putt oppotunity...thereby creating an AS between the 2 holes?

  5.  Or is there another protocol to follow?

  I just said "Sorry" and after I won the match...I gifted my opponent a 3 ball sleeve of 450 credit balls.

  What would you do?  Should WGT revise MatchPlay rules with a suggested protocol?  Or at least say in the rules that this situation could happen...and to just play the balls where they lie...and let the outcome be what it may be.  At least that way nobody should get mad when it happens!   

  Should WGT create software for a "marK your ball option"...to prevent this from happening...and allow the blocked player the option of using this feature.  That way, if the blocked player does not use the feature, he has nobody to blame but himself.

   

• cchristi42 57 Posts

  Thu, Mar 14 2013 8:34 PM

  Personally I would ask my opponent if we can both concede what ever put we are on and move to the next ball.
  
  Would be nice if there was either a mark option, or the ability to let the closer player go first if both agreed. 

• MBaggese 15,368 Posts

  Thu, Mar 14 2013 9:48 PM

  The ball in your line will not affect anything

  Just watch the dots and try to ding it:)

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Thu, Mar 14 2013 10:51 PM

  MB is absolutely right. Just go ahead and putt as if the other ball wasn't there.

  (This is one area of the game where the laws of physics definitely do not apply!)

  ... however, this situation, known as the "stymie" used to be a perfectly legal part of the game of golf, wherein players could deliberately try to leave their ball in the way of their opponents path to the hole.

  The earliest forms of golf in Scotland were predominantly matchplay games, where foiling your opponent was at least as important as making the lowest score yourself. Players put in a stymie would have to try and putt round, or chip over the other ball to get into the hole, and if they knocked their opponent in, then that was good luck for the opponent.

  Bobby Jones was a huge fan of the stymie, believing that it added an additional element of strategy to the game. I believe it was banned in 1952 when the R&A and USGA finally established a joint set of rules.

  BTW: This happened to me this morning in a Best-Ball Pairs tourney. My partner and I both ended up on the exact same line at #4 at RSG, with me a couple of feet further away. When I saw the outcome of my birdie attempt, which went right through my partner's ball, I was able to pass on, via Chat, the precise aiming line so he could sink his birdie.

• BlondinJDB 46 Posts

  Fri, Mar 15 2013 12:11 PM

  Thanks for the above info/discussion item. I posted the initial discussion item while I was a newbee to match play...and did not realize the blocking ball was actually a "ghost" (not really there)...and you could hit through it. Yesterday when this happened to me, I did actually hit "through" my opponent's "ghost ball" and sank the putt. So indeed, you don't have to try to "hit around" the blocking ball. Corwyn...your historical perspective on a "stymie" was absolutely fasinating and I appreciate this information. Makes me appreciate golf's strategy's even more. Well I still feel good about "gifting" my friend a sleeve of balls for feeling sorry for what I thought I had done to him. He played me one heck of a fine 18 hole match (thanks "junkafunk").

• foregettaboutit 227 Posts

  Fri, Mar 15 2013 10:23 PM

  Are you guys saying you don't use a ball marker when your ball is in the way of another player's putt? How rude... LOL

  Fore

• alosso 21,083 Posts

  Sat, Mar 16 2013 12:01 AM

  foregettaboutit:

  Are you guys saying you don't use a ball marker when your ball is in the way of another player's putt? How rude... LOL

  ROTFL - It's not only rude but outright dumb. 

  Rule 22-2 applies (interfering ball), prospective penalty for the rude one: two strokes or loss of hole, respectively.

• BlondinJDB 46 Posts

  Sat, Mar 16 2013 5:27 AM

  I like this above suggestion for WGT to create an OPTION to let the closer player/team putt out (just like in real golf).  That sometimes creates a more realistic feel to the match....puts the pressure back on your opponent (assumng you make your closer putt).

• 35 Posts

  Tue, Mar 19 2013 8:22 AM

  I'm all for the return of the stymie in match play. Four of us played alternate shot format (traditionally called simply a foursome) in Florida this year and we allowed stymies. I think it was and still ought to be a part of match play since it adds an interesting strategic element to the game. It was only outlawed after intensive lobbying principally on this side of the Atlantic where the predominant form of play was and remains card and pencil style golf (stroke play).

  And lest anyone object on the grounds that golf is not croquet, provision was made even as early as 1754 in the seventh article of the original 13 "Articles and Laws in Playing the Golf" on the occasion of play for the Silver Cup at St. Andrews that one must play honestly for the hole and not upon the adversary's ball not lying in one's path to the hole.

  That said, I think it unlikely that the stymie will make an appearance in WGT golf unless the governing bodies of the game recant and once more make the stymie an officially sanctioned part of the game.

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Tue, Mar 19 2013 10:14 PM

  I couldn't agree more, Bernard!

  The stymie would be a fantastic addition to match play golf...

  ... however, we should be careful what we wish for here on WGT. Given the sometimes extremely strange physics of ball-behavior when a shot hits the pin, one can only imagine what could happen if WGT programmers were given license to let balls cannon into each other on the green!!!

  It was great to see a post from such a renowned golf historian as yourself. You pretty much wrote everything worth reading on the early game of golf: I'm amazed to see you still going strong... you must be what, 140 years old by now! Golf's obviously treating you well. :)