Michelle Wie: would've placed 4th, but DQ'd
Wow, Michelle Wie received a very rude welcome to the LPGA: DISQUALIFIED, girl. She would have placed 4th, shooting -8 for the tourney, but the LPGA reviewed her drop today for an unplayable lie from yesterday on the 7th hole after she drove her ball into the bush. I saw it happening yesterday, but am still not quite sure what Michelle did wrong. More here. She did eventually place her ball down, as I recall, presumably after 2 unsuccessful tries to drop the ball no closer to the hole. Please comment if you have the explanation from the LPGA.
Oh, see our last post: Annika won going away, at -19, 8 strokes over Paula Creamer. Natalie Gulbis tied for 5th at 7-under -- or maybe it's fourth, given Michelle Wie's DQ.
UPDATE: The ruling was that Michelle Wie's drop was closer to the hole -- by 3 inches according to her now, by 12-15 inches according to the LPGA rules official. On the NBC video, the LPGA rules official Robert O. Smith admitted that it was inconclusive. But the LPGA rules official took Michelle and her caddie back onto the course after the 4th round, even though the alleged rules infraction occurred during the 3rd round. So how can we be sure that this "recreation" of events on the day after was accurate??
"I don't feel like I cheated," Michelle said after the DQ. "I was honest out there. I did what I thought was right. I was pretty confident. If I did it again, I'd still do that. It looked right to me."
5 Comments:
Bamberger's an idiot! Who's got more integrity?? I think Michelle does!!
You've got it wrong; R.O. Smith is an idiot, and Michael Bamberger's protests should not have been considered at such a late time.
Michael Bamberger shouldn't have any say in this at all. The LPGA should never allowed the DQ since the idiot Smith have inconclusive facts to proved that she did cheat. How can anything you do a review 24 hours later? If the instant replay isnt conclusive, then the call on the field of play should stand. Pro Golfers are as honest as they come.
Based on what has been said by LPGA, in my opinion, Michelle deliberately cheated. Consider the following excerpt of a press conference from the LPGA website:
"Q. Are you saying that no matter where she would have dropped the ball out of that bush, unless she had gone across the cart path there, the ball was going to be closer to the hole?
ROBERT O. SMITH: If that ball, if you had to see this situation, she would have probably been dropping in a dirt area, not on the grass area. And that's the bad part of it. We measured this three or four times. Jim and I wanted to be perfectly sure that what we were doing was right. Unfortunately it turned out that way."
It was no accident that she dropped in the grass closer to the hole rather than dirt. Smith also mentions that regardless of where the ball was in the bush, dropping in the grass would put her closer to the hole. That tells me that visually it's not even close. Also, Michelle says she was 3" closer, the official says 12" to 18" closer. Why the discrepancy? This is disturbing too. They just had an hour discussion about where the ball was, where the ball was dropped and measured distances. Why is there any discrepancy at all?
As for Bamberger's protest, I have no problem with his protest, only the timing of it. If Joe Blow watching from home can phone in a protest then a reporter at the scene certainly can. For whatever reason Bamberger waited until Sunday. He doesn't have a lot of time on Saturday to act though because he is not a spectator, he is a reporter working. He questioned Michelle about it after the round on Saturday but she may already have signed her scorecard by then, in which case it doesn't matter he waited until Sunday.
Golf is very unusual in that you can have rulings the day after the fact. I'm not sure if that's right but pro golfers definitely cheat. I've seen plenty of cheating by weekend hackers with nothing on the line. There's no reason to believe there's no cheating in the pros. Generally speaking though I would say they "are as honest as they come".
In one video of the drop it looked like there was a hedge behind her and dropping closer to the hole would have prevented the hedge from interfering with her backswing. Any info re that video?
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