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.

NFL Should Enforce Safety Rules on Helmets

The NFL this week fined three players tens of thousands of dollars each for particularly brutal tackles involving leading with the helmet.

There's been a backlash among defensive players who say they're just playing hard, that they don't know any other way to play, and so on. One of the fined players wasn't even called for a penalty on the field. Something's wrong with this picture!

According to NFL rules, a tackler may not use his helmet to butt, spear or ram an opponent. It's a 15-yard penalty.

So those who are saying that fining players is wrong because it will compel the defenders to play soft should realize that hitting with the helmet is already prohibited. They've just been getting away with it for years.

Look at footage of games in the 60's and you'll see none of this tackling with the helmet as a weapon. It got started with the Raiders in the 70's and was considered cheap shots. They paralyzed Patriots WR Stingley.

In recent years, it's been all about protecting the QB--leaving receivers and runners free game for assault. The only helmet-contact-related rule they're enforcing seems to be helmet-to-helmet contact.

But helmet-to-anything contact is forbidden by the aforementioned anti-spearing rule. And it should be. The helmet is a protective device, not meant to be a weapon. You're supposed to tackle with your body.

If the NFL would enforce its rule on anti-spearing--maybe, say, sending a memo out to all defensive coordinators and special-teams coordinators that they will be penalized 15 yards every time a tackler leads aggressively with his helmet--you should see the number of such incidents decline substantially.

Steven (Starjet) Kearney

Soccer's Scoring Drought: Analysis and Suggested Remedies

With nearly all the teams having played their opening match, it's already clear that the lack of scoring in World Cup soccer has gotten absurd. To illustrate, through the first 14 games in South Africa:

Teams are scoring on average less than a goal per game--.8 of a goal;

In 9 of the 14 games--64%--at least one of the teams failed to score;

In 10 of the 14 games--71%--neither team scored more than 1 goal;

In 12 of the 14 games--86%--no more than 2 total goals were scored by both teams combined;

Only one of the first 28 teams to play scored more than 2 goals in their first game (Germany got 4);

6 games, that's 43%, were ties;

Goal-scoring has become so rare that fluke goals--such as the English goalkeepers fumble and the Danish wrong-way ricochet header--are decisive;

The crowds have so little to cheer about that they resort to blowing on deafening horns en masse to entertain themselves;

The International Soccer Federation (FIFA) is reportedly considering enlarging the goal to boost scoring. However, such a move could have negative repercussions on how the game is played. And it would compel millions of people to redo or replace their goal structures.

There are other ways to make it easier to score. Taking a cue from thoroughbred racing/exercise programs, officials could "handicap" the goalies by fitting them with ankle weights. Or they could enforce penalties by making the goalie wear a patch over one eye or tying one hand behind his/her back. A really heinous violation might be punished by strapping the offending player ball & chain-style to the goalie. While these scenarios may sound like torture, sitting through a typical soccer game today is already a torturous experience for many.

Reference
Increasing Soccer Goal Size is Questionable!!! (website).

Steven (Starjet) Kearney