Only one person, Matt Wallace says, saw him accidentally swing his golf ball.
Or so he thought.
Golf gods, remember, you see it all.
The divine sequence was played on Friday during Valspar Championship second round, where Wallace drove his ball right and into the pine straw on the Copperhead Course’s par-5 11th hole. It needed delicacy. Wallace said his caddy, Jamie Lane, also warned him. But an unruly tee forced Wallace to hover his club at address, he said, and as he swung it, his ball shifted.
Uh-oh.
Wallace called an official. He also said that he had never made his ball in such a way before.
“I didn’t know if it was in my swing or anything,” he said afterward, “but I definitely touched it and then the ball went away from it.”
However, Wallace said no one else saw the breach. At the time, he was also a double for the tournament and was struggling to make the cut. You know the options before him. An ethical dilemma arose, at least in the golf sense.
But so be it, said Wallace. And he got his one shot penalty.
“You would hope everyone would be like that,” Wallace said.
“Yeah. You kind of — you’re not just doing it for yourself though, even though it’s such an individual sport. You’re doing it to protect the rest of the field. You’re doing it for your staff, your team, your family. I’d rather miss doing something like that in one shot, and then give it all up for the rest, than do it myself, so it happened and I knew it.
“And then I made some birds.”
Yeah, so about that golf gods thing.
After the penalty, Wallace hit his third shot to the left of the green, hit and made par. “Obviously much needed at the time,” Wallace said. Then he birdied 14, a par-4, on a 22-foot putt. Then he birdied 15, a par-3, after hitting his tee shot to 6 feet. Then he birdied 17, also a par-3, after rolling in a 27-footer.
And a par on 18, a par-4, gave him a three-under 68 and a two-under total that was good enough for the weekend.
“Yeah,” Wallace said, “maybe some good karma will come my way.”
You never know who’s watching, after all.
“>
