Golf Talk With Greg Holman – #25

Click play to listen to Greg’s Podcast, or read below.

I was expecting to have the golf tournament blues after the excitement of the Masters with only humdrum tournaments to cover until the US Open on Father’s Day weekend, but the Heritage Classic at Hilton Head did not disappoint.

First of all the venue is iconic, and second, 47 year old Stewart Cink won wire to wire with his son caddying for him, and his entire immediate family in attendance. I thought opening with a 63 was a fluke, and then Stewart put up a second 63. A 69 in round 3 made things interesting, but Cink cruised to victory with a 1 under 70 in the final round to win by 4 over Harold Varner III and Emiliano Grillo.

Cink was an underdog in this tournament. He did win the Safeway Open in September of last year, but before that his last win was the 2009 open championship when he beat 59 year old Tom Watson in a playoff with everybody rooting for Tom. That British open is Cink’s only major championship, but he has 8 PGA Tour wins. He’s also been on the winning president’s cup teams 4 times, and played in 5 Ryder Cups on the winning team in 2008. With this victory in South Carolina Cink joined an elite group. He’s become only the 4th player to win twice in the same PGA season after turning 47. The others being Julius Boros, Sam Snead and Kenny Perry.

Next stop on the PGA Tour is the Zurich Classic at the TPC of Louisiana in the New Orleans area.

A new feature of my golf blog is what’s the ruling? Golf is really more fun if you adhere to the true rules of golf. I was playing a match one time for the club championship, and my opponent actually wanted me to agree to hitting a mulligan off the first tee. When I reminded him that wasn’t in the rules of golf I had him mentally, and easily won that match. Another time a lost ball cost my opponent the match when I told him he needed to go back to the tee and play stroke and distance. He wasn’t very pleased with me, and we never played again but I won the match fair and square.

Now here’s a rule that has cost me on more than one occasion. What is the penalty for hitting the wrong ball. The short answer is two strokes, and the correction must be made before the player tees off on the next hole otherwise he is disqualified. If the error is discovered before beginning the next hole, he can either go back and play the correct ball if fit can be located, or proceed under the rules. If two players exchange balls, each player would drop a ball as close as possible to the original location, or, if the correct ball cannot be found within 3 minutes stroke and distance applies. Any strokes that were made with the wrong ball luckily do not count.

That’s my golf blog for this week, hit ’em straight!