Follow us on Google Discover Dan Rapaport is convinced that Viktor Hovland should not have received a penalty during the final round of the Tour Championship despite appearing to touch the sand with his club on the 13th hole at East Lake.
Sunday proved to be a disappointing day for Hovland. The Norwegian went into the last round in Atlanta with the lead and an opportunity to secure his second PGA Tour victory of the season.
What did you make of Viktor Hovland avoiding a penalty at the Tour Championship?
The Norwegian appeared to brush the sand with his club during the final round…
However, he finished two over par for the day and ended up losing out by three shots to Scottie Scheffler.
Some may feel that the gap should have been even larger.
Dan Rapaport defends Viktor Hovland over Tour Championship controversy
There was a controversial moment on the 13th hole, with television cameras appearing to pick up Hovland accidentally patting down a tiny amount of sand as he addressed his golf ball in the greenside bunker.
Clearly, Hovland would have had absolutely no idea that he made contact with the sand. However, the pictures did not look good, despite a rules official clearing Hovland of any wrongdoing.
There was another incident slightly earlier in the round where Hovland’s ball was only picked up by the television cameras when he went to address it and seemingly pressed some of the rough down with his club.
There has been a lot of debate over how players behave following incidents involving Wyndham Clark and Bryson DeChambeau earlier this year.
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
MORE VIKTOR HOVLAND STORIES
But speaking on Dan on Golf, Dan Rapaport suggested that Hovland should not have faced a penalty for either incident at East Lake.
“The first lick on this was early on the back nine. We saw this during the watchalong and I was concerned. This is normal play, but if this was Wyndham Clark, so you can’t see the golf ball, and then when he puts his club down, you can see the golf ball. This is normal play on the PGA Tour and in world golf the way the rules are written right now, but we don’t bring the same energy for Viktor Hovland that we bring for Wyndham Clark. And that’s just the modern media ecosystem,” he said.
“But he wasn’t done. In the bunker on 13, when you see the zoom in like this, you know it’s not good. When you see this, you go, ‘oh god, what’s going on?’ So if you look extra, extra, extra close, when he pulls the club back, you can see it looks like there is a little piece of the sand that was flattened. This reminds me of VAR in soccer. It’s like what are we doing? It’s a criminal investigation? He’s not grounding his club there to give himself an advantage. He’s hovering it as close like he does on every single bunker shot ever. Because he’s in the final group, you’ve got this camera locked in. I don’t want to live in a world where every single thing is ‘we look at it from seven different angles, I think I see a little bit of sand there’.
“If you call in, firstly, you’re a huge loser. Number two, let the boys play. Obviously, if there is something that is flagrantly wrong, like Patrick Reed digging sandcastles in the Bahamas, you could literally see it with the naked eye. That one you would have zoom all the way in and maybe the second time you see a touch of a little difference. I’m very happy they didn’t give him a penalty.”
The big problem the PGA Tour has after Viktor Hovland was cleared over any wrongdoing
Common sense says that the officials made the right decision not penalising Hovland. It is impossible to argue that he gained any sort of advantage in the bunker by touching the sand, if he did indeed pat it down.
There is also an issue with using evidence from television cameras to dish out penalties.
Even in a 29-man field, there will have been a number of players who barely saw a camera all day on Sunday because they were so far out of contention. So had they done something similar to Hovland, the world would have absolutely no idea whatsoever.
It is unfair to be harsher on those further up the leaderboard simply because every single one of their shots has been filmed.
Having said all that, using common sense is not entirely fair either. While Hovland gained no advantage at all, the game is going to get itself into trouble if it faces having to determine just how much contact with the sand is too much.
Had Hovland noticed what he had done and called a penalty on himself, the television cameras would have shown that he was right to do so.
And if exactly the same incident had happened in another tournament to a player fighting to keep their card, there would have surely been an incredibly heated debate about whether they should be punished.
The answer may be stopping the television cameras from getting so close unless they are going to film every single shot from every single player.
But the PGA Tour has now ended up with a grey area over an issue that was seemingly black or white.
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