PONDering Tiger Woods' Performance at Water Hazard

People arguing about Tiger Woods’ misadventure on the 15th hole Friday at the US Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, ought to get straight about how many strokes Woods was actually penalized.



His first stroke bounced off the flagstick into the water.



His second stroke was a phantom one allowing Tiger to effectively pick the ball up and place it on dry land. Sine the ball is generally lost in the water hazard, the player simply drops a fresh ball approximately where on the coast the original ball went into the water or at some other designated spot. This is often referred to as a penalty stroke but it actually is a courtesy enabling the golfer to stay dry.



His third stroke was the one he hit from the shoreline onto the green.



His fourth stroke was the putt he drilled into the hole.



Now it gets interesting.



His fifth stroke was assessed to him for the amount (one stroke) he was estimated to have benefited from his misdeed---which was dropping the ball slightly beyond the range designated. Tiger himself has said that his placing the ball thusly enabled him to chip the ball within relatively easy one-putt distance. So he had saved himself one stroke by cheating--that needed to be taken away.



That leaves the imaginary sixth stroke as the one-shot penalty--for turning in a false report, i.e a card on which he does not penalize himself 1 stroke for dropping the ball in the wrong place.


Tiger turned in a card with a 4 on the 15th hole. If the Masters officials had approached Tiger before he turned in his card and he had corrected it--to a 5, he would have spared himself the penalty for turning in a bad card, but would still have been penalized for committing the drop infraction in the first place. And so by making Woods’ score a 6, he is being punished for overlooking his offense.


Masreers officials may characterize the assessment of strokes somewhat differently, but the above analysis is probably a decent analysis of the thinking that weent into their decision.