It may have been ultimately meaningless, but the USGA has admitted they botched a crucial ruling during the final round of the U.S. Open that gave Rory McIlroy free relief.
While playing the par 5 14th hole at Los Angeles Country Club earlier this month, McIlroy sent his third shot into a bunker that embedded into the fescue, to the point where he was initially unable to find it.
Courtney Myrhum, the rules official who was at the hole, awarded McIlroy a free drop – but USGA chief governance officer Thomas Pagel told Sports Illustrated the relief was given incorrectly.
“The nearest point of relief was mis-identified; it should have been directly behind the ball,” Pagel said. “If there’s no area immediately behind the ball, you go to nearest point in the general area. But if you look at where the ball was embedded, there was a grassy area below and that should have been the starting point.”
The issue wasn’t that McIlroy shouldn’t have gotten relief at all; rather, he should have taken relief from a less advantageous spot.
“His ball was 100 percent embedded,” Pagel said. “And an embedded ball not in sand is entitled to relief. Now Rory did everything at the discretion of the referee. In her discretion, her judgment was that the reference point for relief was to the side of the ball. And from a ruling standpoint, that’s the end of the story.”
Pagel did add that Myrhum is “an extremely well-qualified referee and she did everything in her judgment where to operate the drop,” but that the reference point for the drop was incorrect.
The difference wouldn’t have been more than 18 inches, according to the report, and it should have not been within the bunker.
It didn’t end up mattering much, as McIlroy was unable to get his ball up and down to save par, and ended up taking a bogey six on the hole.
That bogey ended up being the difference at the end of the tournament, with Wyndham Clark winning by one stroke and McIlroy unable to get another birdie for the rest of the day.
It was a bit of an unconventional U.S. Open, with many fans and players upset with the easy conditions the course provided – especially early on in the tournament.
Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele both shot a 62 on the tournament’s first day, which was the record for the best single-round score in U.S. Open history – a tournament that is supposed to be “golf’s toughest test.”
