{"id":58729,"date":"2025-08-10T08:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T08:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/58729\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T08:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T08:27:10","slug":"pga-tour-officials-forced-into-mid-round-hole-change-after-players-shot-damages-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/58729\/","title":{"rendered":"PGA Tour officials forced into mid-round hole change after player’s shot damages cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tournament officials at the FedEx St. Jude Championship<\/a> were forced to relocate a pin in the opening round after German pro Matti Schmid’s near-albatross approach tore up the green beyond satisfactory repair.<\/p>\n

Schmid carded an ordinary 71 in the first leg of the PGA Tour<\/a>‘s playoffs in Memphis on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But his front nine was anything but, with the 27-year-old making the turn in 39 strokes at TPC Southwind that included making two bogeys, one eagle, one birdie, a double bogey and a triple.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schmid almost holed out for a rare albatross on the third hole from 207 yards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His approach landed next to the cup, making a visible gouge, and rolled out to about five feet. He had no trouble converting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The group behind were forced to wait for a few minutes as the grounds crew attempted to repair the damage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But according to the tour’s senior vice president of rules and competitions, Gary Young, it was not repaired to a satisfactory degree for the succeeding groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Matti <\/p>\n

Matti Schmid<\/p>\n

The result was that the tournament officials were forced to cut a new hole 14 inches to the right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Young later told GolfDigest<\/a>: “The integrity of the hole had been compromised.<\/p>\n

“The lack of \u2026 not so much root structure, but the lack of a thatch layer being built up, it was impossible to repair the hole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Normally we carry a tool with us that we can use to repair the hole on the spot, but when the official tried to repair it, he just couldn’t do it.<\/p>\n

“The soil just wasn’t allowing us to get it back where it would be stable for the remainder of the round. So we went ahead and just cut a new hole.”<\/p>\n

Akshay Bhatia led the FedEx St. Jude Championship after 18 holes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tommy Fleetwood<\/a> hit four birdies in the final four holes to finish one shot behind the American.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Englishman wasn’t the only Brit to have a hot start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Justin Rose and Harry Hall, who are both chasing spots in the European Ryder Cup<\/a> team, finished the day tied for third on six-under.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Schmid's <\/p>\n

Schmid’s round one card<\/p>\n

Bhatia came into the tournament 45th in the FedEx Cup standings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Only the top 50 players make it through to next week’s BMW Championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The season-ending Tour Championship will feature the top 30.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scottie Scheffler<\/a> leads the way, followed by Rory McIlroy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McIlroy isn’t playing this week, deciding to re-charge his batteries ahead of a busy period in his schedule<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His decision appears to have annoyed<\/a> a few PGA Tour members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tournament officials at the FedEx St. Jude Championship were forced to relocate a pin in the opening round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-58729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58729","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=58729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}