The propensity for the Hero World Problem to provide controversial moments has been highlighted as soon as extra, after the two-times main champion Collin Morikawa was handed a penalty instantly earlier than his closing spherical.
Morikawa’s caddie, Jonathan Jakovac, was discovered to have used numbers he had written in a greens guide to supply recommendation as a putt was being lined up on the 4th gap of spherical three. Jakovac had deployed a spirit degree on the observe placing inexperienced to infer numbers; that in itself shouldn’t be banned however writing them in a guide is. Morikawa’s enjoying associate, Matt Fitzpatrick, overheard the dialogue between participant and caddie and later requested the PGA Tour’s chief referee, Stephen Cox, whether or not this was permitted. Morikawa was knowledgeable of the sanction throughout his warm-up for the closing spherical.
Cox stated: “I met with the caddie to discover whether or not there was any breach and, after reviewing the documentation throughout the yardage guide and the formulation of a placing system/chart, which in itself shouldn’t be essentially a breach of the foundations, the style wherein you acquire that info and develop that chart is super-key. That’s why this rule may be very advanced in nature.”
Morikawa, 26, insisted he had no difficulty with Fitzpatrick however appeared unclear in regards to the exact nature of the rule and sad about the way in which the matter was dealt with. “We made the error,” the Californian stated. “From our understanding it was advantageous to make use of a degree on the observe inexperienced and see how putts break and write that down. Clearly it’s not.
“Stephen stated apparently to JJ this morning that it was a gray space in all this. Why are there gray areas? There shouldn’t be gray areas within the guidelines, proper? That’s what guidelines are for.
“I used to be a bit of mad at Stephen. He instructed us to fulfill him within the locker room. I used to be ready in there for round 5 minutes and he didn’t present up and this was halfway by way of my warm-up. If you’re going to inform me some information, I believe you must present up on time.”
Fitzpatrick had forgotten about what he overheard till the topic of placing got here up throughout a dialogue on Saturday night. “I needed to make use of AimPoint [a putting statistics technique] earlier this yr,” he stated. “I spoke to my placing coach, Phil Kenyon, about it. He instructed me that he was fairly sure I can’t write the numbers down or use the AimPoint numbers. So I didn’t do it.
“Then clearly yesterday it occurred and I requested Coxy simply to make clear what the scenario was. I requested the query and he was like: ‘Nicely, now you’ve requested the query, I want you to inform me what’s occurring.’ That was it.
“It’s nothing private. Whether or not it was Tiger Woods or whoever, it’s simply I needed to know as a result of I’d have used it earlier this yr.”
In a earlier Hero World Problem, Henrik Stenson and Jordan Spieth have been penalised for enjoying from an incorrect tee field. Patrick Reed had a two-shot penalty for clipping sand in a waste space throughout observe swings right here in 2019.
Whereas Morikawa completed seventh on 12 below, Scottie Scheffler closed out his 2023 with victory at Albany. The world No 1 took the trophy by three pictures, from Austria’s Sepp Straka, at 20 below par. The returning Woods signed off with a 72 for an encouraging even-par, 72-hole mixture.
