Drop Zones At The Open Championship Are Diabolical (And I Love It)

One thing about professional golf that bothers me is when pros hit into a grandstand and get a free drop that clearly benefits them.

Sure, we can all understand that tournament golf at this level comes with infrastructure. You can’t expect pros to climb up into the third row to hit their pitch shot. If the grandstand is in the way, golfers should be entitled to a drop.

However, this has gone too far. It’s reached the point where the grandstands are like bumpers in a bowling alley.

“Oh, there is trouble short of the green? Let me send it 20 yards long into the grandstand where I’ll be in perfectly fine shape.”

That’s out of balance.

While hitting into a grandstand shouldn’t be a stroke penalty, there should not be an incentive to hit it there. It shouldn’t be a bail out option that comes with no consequences.

There should be some form of penalty that comes with the miscue.

The Open Championship understands this concept

Reason No. 48,952 why I love the Open Championship: they understand that free drops from a grandstand should be painful.

Check out the drop zones this week at Royal Portrush.

They’ve been doing this sort of thing for many years now—they regularly find some of the deepest rough around greens for the drop zones—but I love to give them praise for it each year.

Dethier, the author of the above tweet, asked the R&A about this.

“We don’t want hitting the ball towards a grandstand to be a bail out option and therefore, where possible, we ensure that the dropping zones are not overly generous,” an official told him.

I absolutely love this. Inject it right into my veins.

Hit it in the grandstand? Yeah, we’re going to need you to drop in that small patch of thick fescue that is surrounded by clumps of gorse. You will probably need to stand in them. Too bad.

Don’t want to play from there? Don’t hit it in the grandstand.

Pros get way too pampered with expecting everything to be perfect. The back-boarding with grandstands has gotten out of control. TIO (temporary immovable object) relief has broken contain.

The Open Championship knows this. By putting these drop zones in, they restore some of the real spirt of the game.

You truly love to see it.

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