Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Golf, Tiger Woods
Chris Nee
He's won the famous green jacket of the Masters five times but Tiger Woods was responsible for a dramatic Augusta National incident that might have gone unnoticed without the vigilance of one TV viewer.
Woods was in the hunt for a fifth Masters win in 2013 when a freak shot took his ball into the water on the 15th hole at Augusta.
In the end, he had to wait until 2019 to win the Masters for the fifth time, his first major in more than a decade.
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But he broke an often overlooked and now amended rule on that 15th hole in 2013 and set off a sequence of events that ended with one of golf's steadfast sticklers scrambling to own up to a relatively minor infraction.
According to a Sports Illustrated report ten years later, Woods' shot at the 15th "clanks off the pin, bounding back toward the left fairway into the pond that fronts the green."
"It’s a horrible break, a rarity in Woods’s career. Instead of stopping near the hole, the ball settles in the water, necessitating a penalty stroke [and] a decision on where to drop the ball."
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It was a costly outcome, which distracted fans and broadcasters alike from the "improper drop" Woods took after finding the water.
Woods casually mentioned to a reporter that he'd "played it two yards back" and later said that "it was muddy and not a good spot to drop. So I went back to where I played it from, but I went two yards further back and I tried to take two yards off the shot of what I felt like I hit."
"Woods seemed pleased, but his own words indicted him," wrote SI's Bob Harig in 2023. "According to Rule 26-1a at the time, a player taking a drop in this situation 'must drop as close as possible to the spot where he played the original shot.'"
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The winner of 15 majors was ultimately helped out by David Eger, "a longtime and respected rules official" who happened to to spot the illegal drop while watching the Masters on television.
Eger was eager to prevent Woods signing his scorecard and risk sanctions.
"I hesitated on calling simply because I knew how controversial it was going to be," said Eger.
"If it would have been Joe Schmo, I would have called in, too. It didn’t matter. I was trying to save the player from being disqualified."
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Talk of a possible disqualification gathered pace. Woods' signed scorecard listed a 6 for the 15th hole but had actually shot an 8 when accounting for the two-shot penalty for the improper drop.
In the end, the issue was dealt with rather sensibly.
“They called me in, and I told them exactly what I had done," Woods told SI later. “They gave me the ruling, and that was it. It was not a disqualification. You got a two-shot penalty and off you go."