PGA Needs to See the Light

Professional golf has a lot of rules. If you gave every player a rule of his own, there would be enough left to cover every conceivable water hazard, and plenty more to explain the difference between cough drops, free drops and drops you have to pay for.

Players are always having head-on collisions with the rules, often with comic undertones.

Not long ago, Davis Love III accidentally dropped his sand wedge in a bunker and was penalized for “testing the sand.” Fuzzy Zoeller was helping out a television sports reporter taping a show by hitting a few golf balls on the course after a round, only to be disqualified for “practicing on the course.” Craig Stadler knelt on a towel to keep his pants clean and dry while attempting a difficult -- and unconventional -- shot and was penalized for “improving his stance.”

The rules on the PGA Tour became an issue again Sunday evening on the second hole of a two-man playoff in the Ford Championship at Doral in Miami. The tournament was stopped when Scott Hoch said it was too dark for him to see where he was putting. The tournament resumed Monday morning and lasted a good 20 minutes, just long enough for a third hole, where Hoch made a birdie putt to beat Jim Furyk.

Now, the happiest person about the whole experience was, naturally, Hoch, who had eye surgery five times last year, the last four to correct a botched laser operation.

Hoch’s eyes were good enough for him to read recently in a sports magazine that he had been chosen by his fellow pros as one of the whiniest players on tour.

Maybe so, but there he was, smiling from ear to ear in the sunshine of Monday morning. The 47-year-old tour curmudgeon not only won $900,000, but also showed a better-than-fair working knowledge of the PGA Tour rules.

Presumably, not everyone else was as thrilled. Wasn’t it bad enough that Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson weren’t playing? Then they have a tournament finish that’s competing against “The Today Show.” Certainly the thousand or so fans ringing the second playoff hole, Doral’s No. 1, to see the end of a tournament they had followed all day Sunday were not amused. They booed lustily when Hoch said he couldn’t see well enough to putt.

You can be sure that NBC-TV was not ecstatic. Johnny Miller said he’d never seen anything like it. Then, again, Miller usually sounds as if he’s upset about something. ESPN carried Monday’s conclusion.

The volunteers who work as marshals and do everything else to keep a tournament running smoothly had to come back and so did the media, who suffered by having to get up early again instead of sleeping in.

What was the big deal? Probably, it’s two putts and we’re off to the Honda.

And now that it’s over, the question is, why couldn’t they have finished on Sunday? Don’t you think if Tiger had been involved they would have finished? Are there two sets of rules? One for Tiger tournaments and the other for Tiger-less ones?

Finishing on Monday is rare, but not unprecedented. The last time it happened was at Hilton Head, two years ago, when Billy Mayfair said he couldn’t see after the second playoff hole against Jose Coceres, who won on Monday. But that one was different because the fourth round had been delayed because of inclement weather for an hour and a half.

There weren’t any weather delays Sunday at Doral, just a 1:50 p.m. EST starting time for the last group and sunset at 6:27 p.m. Three long delays for rulings -- oddly enough, two of them involving Hoch and Furyk -- didn’t speed things up, but regulation play actually ended two minutes before NBC’s timetable, at 5:53 p.m.

Slugger White, the PGA Tour rules official for the playoff, reminded Furyk and Hoch at the second playoff hole that they could stop playing, but they wanted to continue. Finally, at 6:33 p.m., with both players on the green, Hoch said he couldn’t read his putt, so that was it. Furyk could have tried to putt, but chose not to.

According to White, if one player says it’s too dark to continue, then it’s too dark to continue. The PGA Tour won’t object. But there have been occasions when players have tried to abuse the darkness issue. White said a player once said he couldn’t see because he wanted play stopped and White had to point out that the sun had not yet set.

We’re out of the dark now. In the clear light of day, besides weather factors and slow play, there’s a simple solution to make sure this doesn’t happen again: Send out the last group before 1:50 p.m.

Build in some extra time in case it rains or there are some lengthy rulings or there’s a playoff. No one would whine about that, not even Hoch.