ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Pinned to a bulletin board in the locker room at last week\u2019s Cognizant Classic was a notice titled, \u201c2026 Competitions Reminders,\u201d that included five bullet points. One particularly interesting item applied to an adjustment to the rule regarding \u201cbroken or damaged clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Model Local Rule G-9 began this year and allows for a player to replace a damaged club with a \u201ccomponent\u201d that has been \u201ccarried by a player or another person.\u201d The primary application of the rule allows players to replace a driver head that has been cracked with another head that\u2019s been carried in a golf bag. Players have been allowed to replace damaged clubs, but this adjustment allows for a more immediate replacement instead the traditional scramble to the locker room to retrieve the player\u2019s backup.<\/p>\n
Ludvig \u00c5berg was the first PGA Tour player to take advantage of the model local rule while playing last month\u2019s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, as first reported by the Associated Press on March 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was [No.] 18 at Pebble on the third day, and my tee shot sailed into the parking lot [out of bounds]. It was so far right,\u201d said \u00c5berg, who was allowed to hit his third shot after a one-stroke penalty with his rebuilt driver. \u201cI knew that wasn\u2019t right, and I looked at the face and I could feel the crack going across the clubface. We had the backup in the bag, so we changed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00c5berg was mindful of carrying a replacement driver head in his golf bag following a similar incident a few years ago at the Texas Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had an incident where my clubface fell off at impact, I hit a shot and the clubface went like 30 yards [forward],\u201d \u00c5berg explained. \u201cSo ever since we\u2019ve been really particular with backup heads, and we saw that the rule had changed ahead of this year, so we put it in the bag in Palm Springs.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to multiple equipment representatives, many players are following \u00c5berg\u2019s lead and keeping a backup driver head in their golf bags just to be safe \u2013 and even those who aren\u2019t said they are considering it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally I have one in the locker but I probably should start carrying an extra one,\u201d Ryan Fox said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of hard, you have to prove that it\u2019s broken. I feel like now that doesn\u2019t happen that much. The ones I tend to break just get little flat spots, you know the club\u2019s not right but it\u2019s not like an obvious one. It doesn\u2019t spin as much and it goes a little crooked. Trying to argue that point to a rules official is kind of hard, so you just suck it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the model local rule, the component must be \u201csignificantly damaged,\u201d and it doesn\u2019t allow for the replacement of clubs in \u201ccases of abuse.\u201d The rule could also apply to other adjustable clubs, like fairway woods, or a shaft as long as the components are not assembled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t hit 3-wood enough times a round to warrant it, whereas driver is the one where you can hit it 10 times a round, maybe more,\u201d Fox said. \u201cIf I break a 3-wood you\u2019re kind of like, I can make that up chipping a driver or hitting 2-iron. You can gap that one, but driver is probably more important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any replacement components, either clubhead or shaft, must \u201cfill the gap created when the player took the broken or damaged club out of play,\u201d which means players can only replace a damaged driver head with the same specs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Pinned to a bulletin board in the locker room at last week\u2019s Cognizant Classic was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-513816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}