Quite Haventaclue, and very well said.  Unfortunately you can tell the golfers from the punters by their posts on here.  It's a clear disqualification.

God Fred got well grilled there ....get me out of here

There are too many working class people making comments here..stick to football!

all i will say is that at any club i've played at, or any people i've played with, in such a situation the overwhelming majority of players would dq themself.

just like racing , golfs a richmans pastime kept alive by working class people,

haventaclue - very articulate post, thank you, I think that says it all in a nutshell

and mexicano - very much in agreement with you

as for the guy on the golf channel, I think he was not very bright and was very muddled in his arguments and was missing the quintessential points which are on the previous page and put extremely well by Haventaclue

what is now going to be interesting is the BACKLASH

I think there will be a considerable one from retired players - what's Jack Nicklaus got to say on this for instance - and from his fellow pros.

if he wins it will be spun into great comback after unlucky shot causes a 2 shot penalty which he overcame like a true champion...

Just think at current price 7.8 he's a screaming lay....

it seems Tiger escapes disqualification because the committee reviewed it and thought the drop was all right and were only later alerted to it not being all right due to Tiger's comments during a TV interview.

So because they fcuked up, somehow Tiger escapes DQ and only penalized two shots.

Seems like very muddled thinking and putting the cart before the horse as the committee are assuming culpability which is clearly the player's.

It is Tiger who dropped in the wrong place and who thus signed for a wrong score.

it's not a ridiculous rule at all.

it was framed to try and stop people taking the kind of liberty that woods tried to take.

perhaps they should frame a rule in order to allow him to drop the ball wherever he fancies?

It seems that some are arguing for a technicality that results in DQ and railing against the use of a different technicality that results in a 2 shot deduction.

Quite a curious situation.

it's not a technicality that should have seen woods disqualified.

it was his failure to proceed correctly with any of the three options he had in the situation he was in.the fact is the way he proceeded merited a two shot penalty.

a further fact is that if he dosen't apply the two shot penalty and signs for the original score he is disqualified.

a rule was brought in last year that enables players who have unknowingly done something in the act of executing a shot, that later comes to light because it was picked up on tv [ something like a double hit, wrongly grounding your club, or the ball moving] to apply the two shot penalty and stay in the comp even though the card has been signrd.

this rule is not applicable here because evey action taken by woods was by design, nothing unseen or accidental took place. the fact is he got confused about how to proceed under the rule he was playing to, and actually "invented" a sort of hybrid rule.

he decided to play under penalty of stroke and distance, but didn't follow that rule to the letter,instead he used half of that rule, and half of the "line of entry rule".

the tournament committe have bent over backwards to envoke the new rule in a shabby fudge to keep him in, in sharp contrast i might add to the way they applied the rule to it's draconian worst in order to penalise the chinese kid one shot.

it may seem harsh to some, but that is the way the game is played all over the world, as golfers we are responsible to get it right, if we don't we accept the consequences.

to the bloobi would just just say that there is no anti woods agenda here, and at that level of the game it's not a grey area. these players and caddies know the exact yardage on any shot, and can go back and find the actual divot, thus being in a position to be able to drop within inches of the original shot.

i would suggest the fact that woods then wanted to put another two yards on the shot in order to get the perfect yardage suggests that he thought he was using the rule to his advantage, but he got it wrong.

so did the rules committee.

anyway; off down the golf club now.

i wonder what will be the main topic of discussion over our early morning coffee and brandy?

If Woods wasn't already ostracised by the majority of the pro's then this will be the final nail.  I cant imagine many of them has remotest sympathy and would want him still in the tournament.  But then again, he doesn't give a f**k anyway....

I wonder what the 'suits and tweeds' up in the R&A think about the application of this now infamous rule?

Several nails struck on head there by mexicamo

Bloob is right that the refs have looked at it and made a decision, but I think that decision is pretty obviously wrong, and if I’m right and the wrongness is obvious, then you have to ask why  … and I think the answer to that has to be because they just didn’t want to DQ Tiger full stop, and they have cobbled together an excuse for not DQing him.

Tiger had three options out on the course.
Drop in drop zone.
Drop as far back as he liked in line with the flag and the last point at which the ball crossed the margin of the hazard.
Drop as near as possible to the point from which he played the original shot.
And the bloob is right, I think, in saying that the rule around that last option needs to be tightened. If you actually drop as near as possible to the point where you hit the last shot, then you would be trying to drop it in your divot, and that would be ridiculous.
Anyway, when they sat down to carry out the first review, and they saw where Tiger went to take his drop, they would have assumed they were looking at a player who was taking the third option. Now if he had, for example, gone back 30 yards in order to give himself a fuller swing, then clearly that would be a breach, or if his original lie had been dramatically downhill and he had gone back 5 yards to get a flatter spot, then clearly that would also be a breach, but he didn’t do either of those things (and in reality if he had tried to do either of those things, I don’t think there would have been anything to review because either the match referee or his caddy would have stepped in and stopped him).
So what the review committee thought they were looking at was a player who was trying to drop as near as possible to the original spot without dropping it in the divot. And they decided that what he had done was ok.
Well you could argue that, you could argue that 2 yards was too far (although it looked less than 2 yards on my tv, and they would have been looking at tv too). But they decided it was ok. So he’s a yard/two yards back from the spot. So what ? He’s disadvantaging himself if anything.
But then Tiger gives a tv interview where it’s clear that he hadn’t been a player trying to drop it as near as possible to where he’d played it from. He had instead been a player who had got the rule mixed up and was deliberately dropping the ball a couple of yards back because he thought he had the option to do that and because he thought it would be to his advantage to do that. That makes it a different ball game. That makes it, no ifs or buts, a two-shot penalty.
So now we have a player who has signed for a wrong score, and that has to be a DQ, unless he can be let off under the rule which they brought in after the Harrington incident. That rule makes a general statement that the committee can waive a DQ in exceptional cases. Is there anything exceptional about this case ? No, there isn’t. It’s a case of a player making an honest mistake (no question of trying to cheat) but clearly breaking a rule. It happens all the time.
That rule also states, more specifically, that the committee can waive the DQ if they are satisfied that the player ‘could not reasonably have known or discovered the facts resulting in his breach of the Rules’. The rule Tiger breached isn’t even an obscure one, and he is probably the best player ever to have swung a club. It isn’t unreasonable to expect him to know this rule.   

I think they should have DQ’d him, and when they didn’t, I think he should have helped them out by taking the weekend off.

listening to 5-live

the masters committee member who came up with the ruling is very good drinking buddies with tiger

they were trying to find rules to help the situation

said at no time was DQ even brought up

every little helps

great post Kelly

rule book is worse than a tax return

Don't mean to be rude, Kelly, but you're talking garbage.

The rule that he broke is in very bold print.

Your comment about him not gaining advantage is rubbish. He admitted that he wanted that extra 2 yards, to help him execute the shot in a better fashion. That is gaining an advantage, mentally if nothing else.

None of the penalty shots were unfair. I agree that he was very unlucky to hit the pin, but we all know that he has had plenty of good luck in the past. That's the rub.

Should have been disqualified.

Haven't had a bet on him at all, so I'm not talking from the pocket, unless he goes on to win the thing. I hope that he doesn't.

There is something very fishy about their statement and decision.
They say at no time was DQ considered, but if not why are they citing Rule whateveritis that allows the player not to be DQ'd?
Cant be both ways, they can and have decided Rule whateveritis is relevant but thats relating to DQ, so they did discuss DQ.
Still stinks, he's in cos he's Tiger, I doubt any other player there would not have been DQ'd.
Whether its corporate, Masters foggies, or media, they made the wrong decision and gives out the wrong message.

Glad it has been of use to a few of you. He was 3.85 when I posted this thread originally.

I don't think there's any question of cheating by Woods. He thought he had the option to drop it back, but he was mistaken. It was arguably a bit boastful to go on tv and explain how two yards mattered to him, but he would hardly be so open about what he'd done if he thought there was anything dodgy about it.