Commissioner For A Day: The Email That Should Be Sent To Players, Jon Rahm Penalty Edition

Sunday, Jon Rahm won the Memorial Tournament despite a 71st hole penalty assessed for causing his ball to move.

If I were PGA Tour Commissioner this is the email I’d sent to PGA Tour players regarding the increasingly problematic tendency to excessively ground the club behind the ball in any kind of lie.

Dear Greatest Athletes In All Of Sport,

It’s been an incredible run since the Return To Golf (© pending) started and I want to thank you for your continued use of a mask when getting Chipotle take-out. Amazing first step. Don’t hesitate to extend that face covering stuff in hotel lobbies or if you have not taken up the special NetJets offer we’ve highlighted (CODE: FLYINGCOMMERCIALSUCKS).

Meanwhile, our positivity rates are as low as the scores you’ve been shooting. Yes, that’s an unfortunate segue to the point of this email you will not read.

This is about the mashing. The pulping, the grinding, the grating, the smashing, the crushing, the squashing, the scrunching and the general pulverizing of grass behind your ball. As you may know by now, last week’s amazing Memorial Presented By Nationwide champion Jon Rahm (500 more FedExCup points) placed his club behind his ball and it moved ever so slightly. He meant nothing by it. However, under a very strict application of the rules, our staff assessed Jon a two-stroke penalty.

I highlight this because Jon is not alone in this habit of getting in there and really testing out that grass behind the ball. While I certainly understand the desire to get your money’s worth, I’d like to tell you a story. See, way back in 1744, guys not nearly as athletic as you, played a lot of golf at this trench-filled place call Leith Links. It was no TPC. The course was in Edinburgh, which you probably drove by when flying in for the The Open. Anyway, those rulemaking mid-18th century non-jocks came up with the original rules of golf. There was a line about playing the ball “where it lies.” Long, boring story short (for the agents possibly still reading this), that language evolved quickly into kind of this, like, big, big rule of golf that shaped all others. Miraculously, the whole play it as it lies creed was a thing for a solid 250 years, with hiccups along the way.

Anything you can do to not test the ground, press down, shard, grind, levigate, triturate or in general, look like you are improving your lie, would be appreciated. Especially when you’re in a featured group on PGA Tour Live or on one of our network partner broadcasts.

I would also point out that we’ll have a lot of rough at upcoming events, particularly with a PGA Championship and U.S. Open on the schedule. And of course The Playoffs© highlighting the season of championships. So talk to your teams about how to test out the ground and improve your feel for a shot by setting the club down NEXT to your ball instead of behind it where you might be seen improving your lie. Or in Jon’s causing the ball to move. Besides saving you penalty strokes and FedExCup points, this will make my next USGA/R&A rules meeting much more enjoyable.

Yours in the Return To Golf,

The Commissioner