Haotong Li, a few seconds into the story, knows where he is going. He laughs.
Then he cuts it off.
“That shit, man,” flax said. “I hate it.
“I hate it.”
LI is joking, of course. Appearing this week on The Smylie Show podcast, he did a lot of that by retelling a moment from the 2019 Presidents Cup that, at the time, caused a bit of a stir. Here’s the setup: During the third day of play at Royal Melbourne, Li and international team partner Marc Leishman Americans played Justin Thomas AND Rickie Fowler in a foursome and, after a tee shot into the trees on the right side of the second hole, Li punched out – but there was an issue.
Thomas was far in the hole. While there is no penalty for playing out of turn, a player can make the offender hit again, under rule 6.4a(2).
And Thomas and Fowler sought Li’s.
Here, we’ll let the podcast exchange continue (and you should listen to the entire episode, which you can here). For a quick background, know that Li was playing in his first Presidents and Saturday’s game was the first in the event.
said the host Smiley Kaufman: “So, Haotong, what does Justin say next to you …? What does he say?”
Said Li: “It literally (expletive) made me play again.”
Kaufman said, “Where did you hit the first shot? Did you put it back in the game?”
Said Li: “Well, I hit a perfect shot through the little gap and I thought, you know, for someone who plays by himself – I’m the only guy on the team who played twice. At least the other guys played three times. So, the first game for me and I’m very excited and I don’t know exactly – I don’t know anything about that rule, you know. Now I learned, I learned, I liked to play fast. And then once in the tree.”
Said Kaufman: “You did.”
Haotong: “Yeah, I did. And then the boss looked at me like, ‘Haotong, I don’t think you can play that.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ JT says, “This is match play.” I said, “Yeah, what do you mean?” He says, ‘Yeah, you’re going to play again.’ I said, ‘What (expletive) are you talking about?'”
Said Kaufman: “And did a rules official say, yes, Haotong, you have to hit again?”
Li said: “Yeah, and the rules officials come in and it includes it and it goes, ‘Oh, you have to play again.’ Guess what? It hit the tree. And they’re both laughing so hard at me.”
However, Li’s retelling ended well.
He said he is now friends with Fowler and Thomas.
Editor’s Note: To listen to the entire episode of “The Smylie Show” with Li, please click here.
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