Shin Da-in's Two-Stroke Penalty Sparks Rules Dispute on KLPGA Tour

A two-stroke penalty assessed against Shin Da-in for playing from a wrong place has drawn accusations of a misjudgment, after the ruling came at the par-4 first hole in the final round of the OK Savings Bank Readyman Open on the Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour at Pocheon Adonis Country Club in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, on the 6th. Shin, who had been seeking a second straight victory after winning the KG Ladies Open the previous week, effectively dropped out of contention once the penalty was imposed.

Her ball was about 25 meters from the hole after she reached the green. Shin marked the ball, picked it up and handed it to her caddie, who cleaned it and set it down behind the ball marker. Shin returned after reading her putting line, placed the ball at its original spot in front of the mark and putted.

A spectator who watched the sequence reported to the rules committee that Shin had played from a wrong place. After reviewing video, the committee informed Shin of the two-stroke penalty at the sixth tee.

Shin filed an objection after finishing her round. "The committee first said the ball had moved three centimeters, then explained after the round, having checked it in slow motion, that it had moved about the width of a fingernail," she said. "My objection was not accepted."

Some in the golf industry argue the penalty runs afoul of two provisions of the Rules of Golf. The first is a possible conflict with Rule 20.2c, which applies a naked-eye standard when video evidence is used. Under that provision, video is not accepted as evidence when a determination cannot be made with the naked eye but can be made from video footage. Critics say video should not have been used as the basis for the ruling, arguing that it is impossible to tell with the naked eye whether Shin placed the ball somewhere other than the marked spot when she replaced it to putt. Choi So-ra, head of the KLPGA rules committee, disagreed. "Once a report comes in, we cannot avoid looking at video evidence," she said. "It was clearly visible on video that the ball had moved about two to three centimeters from its original position."

The second is whether the ruling conflicts with Rule 1.3b(2), which requires that a player's reasonable judgment be accepted when determining a location in applying the rules. Players frequently must determine a spot, point, line, edge, area or other location under the rules — estimating where a ball last crossed the edge of a penalty area, for example, or replacing a ball. When a player has made a reasonable effort, that determination must stand even if video evidence or other information later shows it to have been wrong, once the stroke has been made. "The rules say that when replacing a ball, a player's reasonable judgment must be accepted regardless of whether the spot is known or estimated," a rules expert said. But Choi said acceptance of a player's reasonable judgment about a location is limited to cases in which that location is being estimated. "In this case Shin had marked the ball, so the spot was clear and there was no need to estimate it," she said. "That means this provision does not apply."