The volunteers on the right side of TPC Sawgrass’ 13th hole? When what happened, they said they saw it coming.
“I called him,” said one.
“I called him!”
Then there was the rules official. She had never seen what happened to Kevin Roy during Sunday’s final round Players Championship. Roy had asked him, “Have you ever seen this?” – and she simply said:
“Never.”
In the end, it all cost Roy a shot, and he birdied the hole on his way to finish his round with a three-over 75 and a four-over total for the tournament. But what unfolded on the 13th was curious, and its video – which you can watch below — began circulating Sunday afternoon.
It started with Roy’s ball, which went wide right, bounced once – and disappeared into a small hole in a tree trunk. This excited the volunteers. Roy eventually learned his fate, then laughed when he told his playing partner Eric Cole what had happened “It’s in the hole,” Roy said. “It’s in.” Cole then hit his second shot, before going to see for himself.
Then the official arrived. The decision? Roy took a one-shot penalty for one immovable liethen he fished into the stump hole and got his ball. The presenters of the broadcast were shocked by everything. “Come on,” said one. “This is incredible.” said another.
From there, Roy hit the green, and he two-putted for bogey.
Notably, if the hole had been considered an animal hole, he still wouldn’t have been given relief, and a recent story from the GOLF rules guy addressed that. it read this way:
My golf buddies were playing a cash game. A friend hits his second shot into a hole in the trunk of a large, live tree. His ball came to rest in an animal-dug hole—likely a mole or gopher—inside the stump. He took a free fall just right…but was it the right one? Without the hole, the ball definitely could not be played.
— Scott Bie, Sacramento, California.
Sadly, your friend will want to crawl into a hole after reading this.
An animal hole that qualifies as an abnormal flow condition—from which you get free relief—is defined as “any burrow dug into the ground by an animal, except animal burrows that are also defined as loose obstructions (such as worms or insects).
Those three little words, on earth, got him in. He receives the general penalty (two strokes in stroke play or loss of hole in play) under rule 14.7 for playing from a wrong place because he was not allowed to lift the ball to the first place and did not replace it as required by rule 9.4b.
Had he called it unplayable in the first place, he might have escaped with just a free kick. It’s all enough to make you want to break out your tree iron. … Sorry, I couldn’t resist. What? Were you expecting a “Gopher is a varmint” reference? Puh-rent.
