where he lost in 20 holes to Ryan O\u2019Rear without actually playing 20 holes<\/a>. On the way from the first playoff hole to the second, Mitzel\u2019s caddie accepted a cart ride from a volunteer, who had just shuttled the competitors from the 18th hole to the first playoff hole and was following the match to bring them back to the clubhouse upon the match\u2019s conclusion. The walking rules official witnessed the unauthorized transport and called a penalty, which was loss of the next hole for Mitzel \u2013 and, in this case, the match. O\u2019Rear asked if the penalty could be negated but was told no.<\/p>\n\u201cI have to think anyone in that situation takes the ride when a shuttle driver asks if they want to hop on really quick and not think anything of it,\u201d Mitzel said afterward.<\/p>\n
There have been other notable instances of MLR G-6 coming into play, including at the 2023 Lecom Suncoast Classic on the Korn Ferry Tour, where three players were penalized two shots for accepting shuttle rides midway through their second rounds. Several years before that, at the U.S. Amateur, Akshay Bhatia lost the 14th hole of his first-round match after Bhatia\u2019s caddie asked someone who he thought was a USGA rules official if he was allowed to be carted back from the restroom. The person was merely wearing volunteer apparel. Bhatia eventually was defeated in 19 holes.<\/p>\n
Moving forward, though, tournament committees will have more freedom when applying MLR G-6.<\/p>\n
There is now this verbiage: \u201cA committee can also later approve a ride that was accepted by a player under the mistaken belief that it was allowed, such as when it was reasonable for the player to believe that the person who offered the ride was authorized to do so as part of the competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, in Mitzel\u2019s case, the rules official could\u2019ve negated the penalty if he felt that Mitzel\u2019s caddie had made a reasonable mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mitzel Rule, anyone? As part of its latest additional clarifications to the Rules of Golf, the USGA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-401060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401060","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=401060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}