Just wondering what everyone thinks about this.....

Attended a high school tourney this past weekend (if you are concerned about the youth of America, go to a high school golf tournement), a player, instead of marking the score for the last hole, added the holes up and placed that score in the box for the last hole, and unfornuately, signed the card, giving him a score of 149 instead of the 77 he shot.

Clearly the rule states, if you sign for a higher number than the score you had, then you must accept the higher score. Do you think that the rule should be modified somehow to allow for obvious mistakes to be corrected, or is this something that works just fine as is.

You could tell that the kid was heartbroken over this, and I sure that this lesson will never be lost on him. Looking forward to hearing other opinions on this.

Dsquare

As hard as it might seem, I think that young man learned a great lesson that he will remember the rest of his life and he will be a better person because of it.

Agreed. Attention to detail is definitely something that can be learned from.

I don't know about better person, but he surely won't make that particular mistake again. It's a dumb rule, it should be changed.

I ran a tournament for our league and a team signed their card without even paying attention to the scores and afterward, when I was double checking the addition, I questioned them on it as their score was higher than it should have been. They would have placed in the tournament, but they signed for the higher score and took themselves out of it.
They were not happy with me, but that's the rules. They argued that it was supposed to be a "fun" league.

I think the beauty of a number of rules in golf is that they are "over the top" in many regards and that there isn't someone at the end saying "well, it's all right, I forgive you". IMHO youngsters need to learn that there are consequences for screwing up and I'd rather see them learn that lesson on a golf course rather than in real life.

I agree to an extent. But when the penalty goes so far for such a minor unintentional mistake, and a clerical one at that, I think the real lesson gets lost more often than not. Really, a 72 stroke penalty?

I'd be more supportive if the penalty were capped at two strokes.

Sounds to me like they were right.


I stopped adding my scores for tournaments about 20 years ago as it is not my responsibility. I make sure the hole by hole is correct, sign it and turn it in. I have been questioned on it but I never record the total. Can cause too much confusion if you ever make an error.


6-6d/2 Total Score Recorded by Competitor Incorrect

Q:

In stroke play, a competitor returns his score card to the Committee. The hole-by-hole scores are correct, but the competitor records a total score which is one stroke lower than his actual total score. Is the competitor subject to penalty?


A:

No. The competitor is responsible only for the correctness of the score recorded for each hole -- Rule 6-6d. The Committee is responsible for the addition of scores -- Rule 33-5. If the competitor records a wrong total score, the Committee must correct the error, without penalty to the competitor.


Although in your defense with the rules as they are it's damned near impossible to get every rule accurately applied to every situation.

Ah, I knew I had some paperwork from that tournament. I remembered wrong, they signed for a lower score than they had. Still doesn't change the fact that the rule says as long as they sign for their correct score on each hole and not the overall....

Good to know. Thanks for clarifying that for me ND. I WILL remember that.