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I have no problem with abiding by rules or even tradition, but I do not see the relevance of the players having to sign an accurate scorecard on the PGA Tour.

Each group has a "flying squad" that contains a walking scorer or scorers with wireless hand-held devices, in addition to the traditional standards bearer (usually a kid carrying a scoreboard on a pole).

TV coverage makes this notion ever more obsolete.

I have no problem with tournaments having this as a rule when they do not have all of the technology and staff to handle real-time scoring. It just seems that is one of the rules for a Tour event that has lost its usefullness.

Of course, there are still lots of players that either don't sign their card, or sign for a wrong card and get DQ'd. But they why when you sign for a higher card, do you not get DQ'd, just penalized the strokes.

Seems antiquated to me. Thoughts?

TRADITION.....

It's part of the game to keep track of your own score correctly. It's one of the mental aspects of the game in all levels of golf.

In the 1968 Augusta Masters, Roberto De Vicenzo signed his card with a par instead of his real score -a birdie, for the 17th hole. That "extra" stroke prevented him to tie for the first place with Bob Goalby, who was proclaimed champion. People were confused and astonished. De Vicenzo's quote afterwards became famous for its simplicity: "What a stupid I am!"

De Vicenzo was a serious candidate, he had won the British Open the year before, defeating Jack Nicklaus. He often says that Goalby and him will have their play off at heaven.

Golf and the Rules of Golf are the same thing, so there's nothing to criticize except for one thing: at that time players exchanged score cards, so De Vicenzo's card had been actually filled in by Tommy Aaron. I understand that pros don't exchange cards anymore but I'm not sure. Amateurs still do it here in De Vicenzo's country. It's not a good practice IMHO because it increases the chance of errors when players have to keep track of two scores at the same time.

Scoring is the basis of our game and verification by your playing partner forms part of this basis. This aspect of the game should never be overlooked and any consideration to change the rule and procedure would be ridiculous.

I think your facts are incorrect.

The standard procedure - whether it is a flight championship at the local club or a PGA Tour event - is players keep track of both their own scores AND their opponents.

The bottom portion of the card (where you keep your opponents score) is perforated. At the conclusion of the round, you tear that off and exchange it with your playing partner. Then everyone verifies each others score.

What HAS changed since the days of Roberto's tragedy is players now go to a trailer or scoring tent in a roped off area. Back in April 1968 there was a bit of rushed confusion which may have contributed to the unfortunate error.

Mr. De Vicenzo never placed blame on anyone but himself, though. He merely declared "What a stupid I am", but never once did he make any excuses. Very classy gentleman. Ironic he is remembered for a rules mishap, as his integrity is impeccable.

Thanks for the explanation BPC, I didn't know that. In Argentina score cards are usually not perforated (at least in amateur rounds and championships). We literally exchange cards with other competitor before the start (if playing with caddies, player A's caddie keeps track of player B's card and viceversa), so we often only keep written track of the the rival's score. That's a bad practice. All I've read about Augusta 1968's incident mentioned a single score card kept by Tommy Aaron and signed by De Vicenzo so I thought they did the same at that time.

Aye, well we live in different golf worlds, don't we?



The USGA governs the USA and Mexico, while the R & A is the organization for the rest of the world. No surprise to find we have different common practices I suppose.

To be honest, I took up golf in 1968, and didn't play in any kind of competition until 1975 or so. I presume perforated cards were in use prior to that, but I'm not certain.

There is a book about the 1968 Masters called "The Lost Masters: Grace and Disgrace in '68". Here's an account of what happened:

Roberto holed out from the fairway on number 1 during that final round, and the gallery sang "Happy Birthday" to him. Then he birdied 2 and 3 to go 4 under for the day. But his 65 got turned into a 66 through carelessness.

Goalby got hate mail and death threats by the hundreds. Roberto received, by his own estimate, close to a million letters and telegraphs of support. He handled it with grace and charm, and won over fans in much the same way Van de Velde did in 1999. He received all kinds of awards for sportsmanship and his contributions to the game, once remarking "This is the third time the writers misspell my name on trophy. Maybe I am not the only stupid".



But he was more than just the answer to a trivia question, and he should be remembered as a major champion, not for a gaffe. More importantly - at least in my opinion - he was a gracious gentleman who accepted what happened with uncommon dignity.

He didn't make the World Golf Hall of Fame because folks felt sorry for him. He earned it with 230 victories around the world over 47 years. He was Gary Player before anyone even thought of golf as a global game.

I've read some excerpts at Amazon, it's a very interesting book. Sadly they ran out of copies except for used ones, which they don't ship here.

How does it work when there are three players in a group? Is there room on the card for more than one playing partner?

Ummm....it's not complicated.

Player A keeps track of own score and Player B
Player B keeps track of own score and Player C
Player C keeps track of own score and Player A

At the conclusion of the round, you tear off your opponents card from the bottom for them to compare with their own scorekeeping.

green15--



I agree with you completely

I think part of it is only you know exactly what your score really is. If you swung and missed someone else might not know if that was a practice swing or an attempt. Or if you accidentally double-hit the ball, or if your putt started moving and you hit it anyway.

A perfect example was Henrik Stenson in last weeks Duesche Bank International Open, he double hit his ball a few times and couldn't be sure how many times he'd hit it, so had to return a no score, so if he didn't know, how would scorers and officials?

Slightly off the subject but a guy a played with last Saturday shot a 77 in Captains Day, I thought it strange when he took his card off the other player in our 3 ball and dissappeared (it's traditional for players at our club to go straight to the computer and enter scores immediately). The guy who marked his card told him he wasn't great at scoring on the 1st tee and would ask his score after every hole. Anyway, he went back out to play again. When I checked the results thefolloiwng day, he was down as having shot a 75, low and behold his handicap was not altered as he was only +1 with this score. His handicap has been steadily going down over the last few weeks even though his scores have been worse than mine (he has access to the system), so I was watching him closely and am 110% positive he shot a 77. The 77 would have given him an adjustment of +0.2, back up to 5 (4.6) I suppose there wil always be some corrupt players out there! I don't want to make anything of it, it just angers me when I'm working so hard at trying to get my handicap down.

Why should pro's be any different to everybody else. That is what makes golf great, all the tradition and the honesty that goes with it.