In the inaugural edition of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, we celebrate Melissa Reid’s incredible strength and are still scratching our heads at one caddie’s bush-league move.
The Good
One month after her mother’s death, Melissa Reid won the first event she played. If this feature had a “The Remarkable” category, Reid would be filed under that.
Reid shot an even-par 72 last Sunday and won the Raiffeisenbank Prague Golf Masters on the Ladies European Tour, beating Diana Luna by a shot for her fourth LET victory.
“I think with something like what’s happened to my family and me the last four weeks nothing really seems that difficult anymore,” said Reid.
The Bad
Innocent until proven guilty may be par for the course in a courtroom, but the Rules of Golf imply where there’s inconclusive evidence, guilt is always assumed.
As was the case in Round 1 of the Travelers Championship, where Cameron Tringale was assessed a two-stroke penalty when his ball moved – a third of a revolution – and Tringale failed to replace it.
There would have been no penalty if the ball had been moved by an outside agency, such as wind. But because Tringale was not looking at it when it apparently moved, he couldn’t be 100 percent sure that it was moved by an outside agency and thus, guilt was assumed.
‘The rule is the rule, but it’s just poorly written, it’s just not specific enough. It’s very vague,” Tringale said.
While we can’t seem to all agree – or understand – this rule, let’s agree to all agree it needs further examination and potentially even further adjusting.
The Ugly
Mathias Vinson, now the former caddie to European Tour player Jose Manuel Lara, made a bush-league move last week when he tried to ditch Lara’s 15th club in the bushes in the opening round at the BMW International Open.
Lara was disqualified from the event and Vinson banned from employment on the European Tour.
There are so many other moves Vinson could have made that may have cost his player strokes and potentially even his job, but trying to stash the club in the bushes definitively cost Vinson his job and any future jobs as a caddie on the European Tour.