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Another Scorecard Snafu

Caroline is actually one of my really good friends. I was very sad to hear what happened to her, but she will move on to bigger and better things for sure! One thing that isn't mention in this article (which I know from talking to her) is that she looked over the card not once, but twice, this lead to her being even more surprised when she found out about the ruling.
 
Professional golfers curse and pound the ground with their clubs on TV, but that's OK. It's high school golfers who don't double check their partners math who are threatening the integrity of the game.

The rule is to prevent cheating, a worthy cause, but the implementation is vindictively stupid. I wonder who she pissed off.
 
Has there been a comment from the girl who wrote the wrong score down?
 
bjmaverick said:
The rule is to prevent cheating, a worthy cause, but the implementation is vindictively stupid. I wonder who she pissed off.
Click to expand...

WHAT???

It was being run like a USGA event. If the rules official doesn't implement the rule, he has no job. What kind of precedent does it set when you don't follow the rules of the game? Hey, we will overlook it this time but never again?

If you don't like the rule, make sure you don't break it.

I feel bad for the girl, I really do. I played competitive golf in high school and ALWAYS had my own score on the bottom of my opponents scorecard. More than once I had to walk through a hole with my group to get the scores accurate for everyone. It is part of the game and actually is pretty easy to follow.

We had a local kid who was on his way to win the state tournament by like 11 strokes. He put his approach shot within 6 inches of the hole and had a tap in birdie to finish it all off. He walked up with his putter and tapped it in. One issue, he didn't take the head cover off his putter! He absolutely destroyed everyone for 35 holes and 2 strokes but blew it on the final stroke to win it all. Even if his "cheating" wasn't intentional, it was still against the rules and cost him.

Live and learn.
 
I side with the folks here that feel for the golfer but also say the rule is there so follow it.

It is not hard to keep your own score, most tournament score cards have a tear off strip where you can keep your scores along with the person you are a marker for. Then at the end, tear that strip off and compare it with your official score hole by hole. I've noticed people get involved in adding scores at the end but that doesn't matter at all. The only thing that matters is that each hole is recorded accurately.

If the score card doesn't have that feature, then keep a second card to make that hole by hole comparison. Don't rely on memory, there will be too many distractions at the finish.

I do regret it for the young lady and wish her much success in the future. It sounds like she may have a bright future in golf and I bet she never makes that mistake again.

Edit: After reading the write-up. It seems to be incorrectly reported when it says she signed for an total score. When you sign a card it is to verify the score on each hole it is not to verify the total. The tournaments I have played in, you go to a scorer's table at the finish where you sit down in front of an official who adds the score and asks you if that is correct. So adding the score any number of times will still be wrong if a hole is recorded incorrectly. CHECK EACH HOLE
 
I do feel bad for the girl, but I also agree she should have just checked her scores carefully and followed the rules. I've played in several amateur tournaments and the one thing they always stress to us before we play is to check your scorecard and make sure it is correct before you sign in. You can't just check the 9 hole and final round scores to see if those are right, because it really doesn't matter if those are right or not. The only thing that matters is if the hole by hole scores are correct. They won't penalize you if you sign a scorecard that had all the hole scores correct and didn't have the total score correct. It would only take a few seconds to run down the hole scorecard to make sure they are correct and she would have been fine.
 
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