Davis calls penalty on himself, gives up shot at first PGA win

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/blog/devil_ball_golf/post/Davis-calls-penalty-on-himself-gives-up-shot-at?urn=golf,234963

"Imagine standing on the edge of achieving your life's dream. You make a small mistake that will cost you your dream -- but if you don't say anything, you might just get away with it. Would you own up to the mistake, or would you keep quiet and hope for the best?"

"Davis's approach shot on the first hole of the playoff bounced off the green and nestled in among some weeds. (You can see the gunk he was hitting out of in that shot above.) When Davis tried to punch the ball up onto the green, his club may have grazed a stray weed on his backswing.

So what's the big deal? This: hitting any material around your ball during your backswing constitutes a violation of the rule against moving loose impediments, and is an immediate two-stroke penalty. And in a playoff, that means, in effect, game over"

"Okay, you can think that's a silly penalty or whatever, but that's not the point of this story. The point is that Davis actually called the violation on himself."

You can't remove a loose impediment in a hazard, but you are penalized if you make contact with one during the backswing. Davis hit a long horizontal reed early in his backswing, one he wasn't sure was loose. If it had been struck only his downswing, or was live or attached, there's no penalty.

Davis wasn't even focusing on that reed. He pulled his second shot into the hazard and debated the best strategy, whether to take a penalty drop and try to chip for par from a relatively simple location, or risk a blast over rocks and out of the hazard toward the pin. I thought he made the correct call but it brought other variables into play.

He's being heralded on the golf sites tonight, including one that refuses to allow any discussion of Tiger Woods. I wish I were joking. Golfwrx.com is one of the 2 or 3 biggest golf sites, with more than 100,000 members, but it's currently taboo to post anything about Tiger.

ground your club, but if you happen to touch the grass, there is no penalty.