New information from the PGA Tour about the relief Rory McIlroy took for an embedded ball at last week’s Farmers Insurance Open indicated a major difference between his situation and that of Patrick Reed.
McIlroy told reporters the PGA Tour was informed Monday that a course volunteer acknowledged stepping on his ball while looking for it in the rough, providing an explanation of how the ball might have become embedded after taking a bounce.
In Reed’s case, after a controversial decision to pick up his ball before his lie was inspected by a tournament official, he was awarded a free drop at the 10th hole during Saturday’s third round at Torrey Pines in San Diego. When replays showed the ball had bounced before coming to the spot in the rough where Reed found it — which made it unlikely that the ball could have ultimately landed with enough force to break the ground and meet the standard for an embedded ball — many observers, including analysts on CBS’s telecast, concluded that Reed had acted in an improper if not unethical manner.
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Reed, who would go on to win the tournament, insisted after the third round that a rules official told him he’d “done this perfectly,” and he pointed out that a nearby course volunteer said she did not see the ball bounce. Given that he had already moved his ball, though, the official he called over was left to feel around the spot where Reed said it landed and confirm that there did appear to be “a lip,” which would indicate broken ground.
McIlroy did not call an official after checking on his ball in the rough Saturday at the 18th hole. He informed his playing partners that the ball had become embedded amid wet conditions at Torrey Pines and, given that no one there had seen the ball bounce beforehand, McIlroy took relief and played his approach shot from a different lie.
While Reed caught plenty of flak for his actions Saturday — in large part because of cheating accusations lodged against him in the past — McIlroy got the benefit of the doubt in the eyes of most observers. Later in the day, Reed’s official Twitter account posted a message meant to defend him by blaring in capital letters that McIlroy “DID THE SAME THING TODAY ON HOLE 18! AND DIDN’T EVEN CALL A RULES OFFICIAL OVER TO DEEM THE BALL EMBEDDED.”
The PGA Tour felt compelled to issue a statement Sunday saying McIlroy had found himself in “virtually the same situation” that Reed faced, and that its rules committee was “comfortable with how both players proceeded.”
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On Wednesday, another statement said the PGA Tour received an email Monday evening from a Torrey Pines volunteer who saw McIlroy’s ball “having accidentally been stepped on in the rough by another volunteer.” The Tour added that it notified McIlroy the next day.
No similar information has emerged to explain how Reed’s ball could have become embedded following a bounce.
Speaking Wednesday at the Waste Management Open in Phoenix, McIlroy said that after he shot a final round of 73 at the Farmers to fall from three shots off the lead to eight shots back of Reed’s winning total, he had “a bit of a rough Sunday night.”
After seeing a replay that showed his ball bounced at the 18th hole the day before, McIlroy admitted, “I just started to doubt myself a little bit, which is not like me, but I was convinced it was an embedded ball.”
“Obviously, the video came out on Sunday with my ball bouncing and then going in, and at that point I’m like, ‘Well, it must have went into its own pitch mark or something, because the ball was obviously plugged,’” he said. “It’s funny, I went to bed Sunday night sort of questioning whether I had done the right thing after seeing the video. And then it’s so weird, the Tour got an email on Monday from a volunteer saying that he didn’t tell me at the time and he should have, but he stepped on the ball [trying] to find it. So I guess I almost took the wrong relief, because I should have taken relief for a stepped-on ball, which means you can place it instead of drop it, but at the time I didn’t have that information.
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“I at least felt better about my actions, knowing I did the right thing, that I actually did take relief for a ball that was embedded or stepped on,” McIlroy continued. “So it sort was nice that that came to light, because I was sort of questioning myself on Sunday a little bit.”
In an interview immediately after winning the tournament by five shots, Reed said of being able to maintain his focus on Sunday, “I felt fine. I felt great throughout the day.”
Among those critical of Reed’s actions on Saturday was Xander Schauffele, who was among a group of players finishing a distant second at Torrey Pines.
“Obviously, the talk amongst the boys isn’t great,” Schauffele said Sunday, “but he’s protected by the Tour and that’s all that matters, I guess.”
As suspected based upon past actions/reputations and contrary to Reed’s quote tweet that Rory did the same thing on the 18th hole “end of story” well it’s not quite the end on the story. Rory’s and Reed’s drops where markedly different. https://t.co/UMiYcEg1lg
— Brandel Chamblee (@chambleebrandel) February 4, 2021Reed is now in King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia, for the Saudi International, where he said Wednesday (via Golf Channel) that when he got off the plane he had a text from Schauffele.
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Reed did not divulge what Schauffele said, but claimed it was “one of those things that all you can do is try to do the right thing and from that point, move on.”
“We’re good,” Reed reportedly said later. “We’re all good.”
Asked if he was concerned about other players taking issue with him, Reed replied, “No, not at all.”
When McIlroy fielded a question Wednesday from a reporter about having been “dragged into the situation” by the tweet from Reed’s account, he suggested Reed might not have been the one who posted it. Reed’s wife Justine is suspected by some in the golf community of not only tweeting from his official account but also of using an anonymous, so-called “burner” account to vehemently defend him.
“Not sure it was Patrick. Could have been someone from the Reed family,” McIlroy said with a chuckle, “but I don’t think it was Patrick.”
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