NASSAU, Bahamas — Tiger Woods was at the center of a curious rules situation at the end of his second round of the Hero World Challenge Friday at Albany Golf Club.
Woods, who shot a 1-over-par 73 Thursday, came to the 18th hole on Friday 5-under par on his round and 4-under for the tournament. He blocked his 3-wood tee shot to the right and the ball ended up tangled at the bottom of a gnarly palmetto bush in a sandy area.
Woods, opting to try to hit it out of the bush rather than take an unplayable lie, which would have cost him a penalty stroke, took a short whack at it and appeared to punch it out onto the grass.
On slow-motion TV video replay, however, it looked like Woods either raked, scraped, carried the ball with the face of his club, double hit it or all of the above.
Woods finished the hole, taking a double-bogey 6 to finish with a 3-under-par 69 and stood at 2-under for the tournament through 36 holes.
When he reached the scoring tent adjacent to the clubhouse Woods was informed that the shot from the bushes was under review by officials, who scoured the TV video.
After spending about 15 minutes in the scoring tent talking to officials, including Mark Russell, Woods emerged unscathed and without a penalty and his score stood.
“First of all I didn’t feel like I violated any rules,’’ Woods said. “I felt I was trying to play a shot. But the rules committee pulled me aside and said there may be a violation. We took a look at it. Mark has been in the [TV] truck trying to determine whether or not I had hit the ball twice.
“I didn’t feel like I hit it twice. It happened so fast in such a short motion. But under high-def and super slo-mo, you can see it — I made contact twice. But there was no violation I guess, so I shot what I shot today.’’
Russell explained what went into the examination, saying, “The first thing we had to do was determine if he made a stroke at it, and we did determine that he made a stroke at it. Then second of all, did he hit the ball twice?
“Well, Tiger didn’t think he hit the ball twice, and it was not discernible to the naked eye [that he did]. We had to look at high speed, slow-motion video and [the ball] probably did stay on the clubface too long, but there was no way he could have known that.’’
So it was determined that Woods’ shot was legal and he was not penalized.
“As players, we always protect ourselves,’’ Woods said. “Sometimes we call penalties on ourselves, call penalties on other players. The guys aren’t trying to bend the rules out here. We’re always trying to protect each other. This was as very interesting situation.’’
Next year this situation won’t be an issue as the USGA is eliminating the double-hit rule and it will no longer be a penalty.
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