If you were tracking Rory McIlroy’s form earlier in the week at the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship, you would not have been surprised to see him birdie five of his first nine holes at Wentworth on Thursday en route to an opening three-under 69. Really, you might have expected him to go lower, given in the Wednesday pro-am he made 10 birdies and an eagle and recorded the unofficial course record on the revered Harry Colt design. (Alas, pro-am scores don’t count in the record books.)
Sandwiched between McIlroy’s early run of birdies in the first round was an oddity: a ruling that left Sky Sports broadcasters scrambling for a copy of the local rules in play for the week. The head-scratching started after McIlroy tugged his tee shot on the par-3 14th well left of the green. The ball settled on a narrow strip of grass between a fence and cart path, leaving McIlroy a daunting, seemingly unplayable, lie.
Unless…
“I think he’ll get relief from that blue hoarding, Sam,” commentator Tony Johnstone said on the broadcast, speaking to his booth mate, Sam Torrance. “I think there’s an out-of-bounds fence just behind that, so I think you probably get relief.”
“I thought we were using the blue hoarding as the out of bounds?” Torrance said.
“Oh, really?” Johnstone said. “I might have gotten that one wrong when we had our rules meeting yesterday.”
Here, announcer Alison Whitaker stepped in, reading verbatim from the local rules, which state that players would not receive free relief from the fencing on 14, including the base supports and brackets.
“So this is going to be interesting,” she said. “This is going to set the precedent for us this week.”
At this point, the commentators’ conversation shifted toward whether McIlroy might get relief from another source: the cart path. His ball was pinned in such a position that McIlroy had no swing from the right side, but he recognized that if he came around to the other side of the ball and swung left-handed that he could take a backswing — and, from that position, the path would impede his stance.
By this time, a rules official was on the scene. As he watched McIlroy take practice swings from the left side, with McIlroy’s right foot touching the path, the official said, “Yep, I see that as a reasonable shot. Yeah, that’s fine.”
That the official deemed the shot “reasonable” is key, because that determination meant McIlroy could take free relief. Better yet for McIlroy, because the fence prevented him from dropping on the far side (or fence side) of the path, he was permitted to cross the path and drop on the greenside, albeit no nearer the hole.
Here’s how the DP World Tour explained the ruling to GOLF in an email:
To the left of the 14th hole is an immovable obstruction i.e. the cart path. As the stretch of grass near the boundary fence is very narrow, the grass has been tied into the path and is part of the immovable obstruction. If a player has a shot and can play the ball he is entitled to relief, even if the ball is on the stretch of grass. Therefore, in this situation, the player dropped the ball at his nearest point of relief because he could play the ball.
McIlroy took his drop, played a nifty chip to about five feet and holed the ensuing putt for a par that, in the moments after his pulled tee shot, had seemed like an unlikely outcome. Should McIlroy prevail by a shot this week at Wentworth, his first-round par save at 14 — aided by a clever application of the rules — will be a moment worth revisiting.
McIlroy finished the day at three under. Through 18 holes, he is three back of co-leaders Aaron Rai and Sweden’s Joakim Lagergren.
“I said last week in Ireland, I see encouraging signs in my game,” McIlroy said after his round. “It’s just a matter of sticking with it, sticking with some of the feels that I’ve got in my swing, and hopefully over time, that feels more natural and I can just get in the flow of visualising shots and hitting shots and being more instinctive on course.”
On 14, anyway, those instincts were spot on.
