{"id":283950,"date":"2025-11-14T12:44:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T12:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/283950\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T12:44:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T12:44:25","slug":"pga-tour-pros-great-drive-winds-up-in-all-time-nasty-divot-hole-australian-golf-digest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/283950\/","title":{"rendered":"PGA Tour pro&#8217;s great drive winds up in all-time nasty divot hole \u2013 Australian Golf Digest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arguably the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.australiangolfdigest.com.au\/opinion-in-a-deep-hole\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">most-debated rule in golf<\/a> involves whether a player deserves free relief from a divot hole in the fairway. Those in favour of that point out that a golfer shouldn\u2019t be penalised for hitting a good shot. Those against fall back on the game\u2019s \u201cPlay it as it lies\u201d mantra.<\/p>\n<p>Up to this point, the latter group has won. But we\u2019d be interested to hear Ryan Palmer\u2019s vote on the matter after what happened to him today.<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.australiangolfdigest.com.au\/opinion-in-a-deep-hole\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In a deep hole<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Playing in the opening round of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, the four-time PGA Tour winner striped a drive down the middle on Port Royal Golf Club\u2019s par-4 12th hole only to discover his golf ball had settled into a divot hole. And when we say settled, we mean this thing really sat down and got comfortable in one.<\/p>\n<p>Paul Hodowanic of PGATour.com snapped these screenshots of this all-time nasty break:<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">One of the more gnarly divots I&#8217;ve seen a ball find on the PGA TOUR. Yeesh. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/E8mVarVJmm\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/E8mVarVJmm<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Paul Hodowanic (@PaulHodowanic) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PaulHodowanic\/status\/1989040344701288883?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">November 13, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ooof, that\u2019s rough. He almost needed a shovel to dig down to hit that. Usually, you at least have some room around the perimeter to work with (read Greg Norman\u2019s tips for hitting out of a divot hole <a href=\"https:\/\/www.australiangolfdigest.com.au\/greg-norman-living-with-divots\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>), but that is almost a perfect golf-ball-sized hole. And a deep one at that.<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, Palmer missed the green with his approach shot. However, he was able to get up and down and save par. A tip of the cap to you, Ryan. Way to battle.<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.australiangolfdigest.com.au\/rules-of-golf-review-why-you-cannot-take-free-relief-from-a-divot-hole\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">It\u2019s one of the most loathed rules in golf. So why can\u2019t you take free relief from a divot hole?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Still, that\u2019s not the kind of situation you ever want to find yourself in \u2013 especially during one of the final two PGA Tour events of the year as players are jockeying to maintain their tour cards for next season.<\/p>\n<p>    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arguably the most-debated rule in golf involves whether a player deserves free relief from a divot hole in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,164038,164039,164040,755,138747,44,1747,164041,164042,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-283950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-butterfield-bermuda-championship","12":"tag-divot","13":"tag-divot-hole","14":"tag-golf","15":"tag-golf-digest","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-pga-tour","18":"tag-port-royal-golf-course","19":"tag-ryan-palmer","20":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}