Rymer Bites: Christina Kim & Rules Controversy from LPGA Q-Series

Charlie Rymer, hanging out in the front porch swing here in beautiful Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, on a very rare, rainy day. A little bit of controversy over the weekend in the world of professional golf. How about the LPGA Qualifying Series final round? A lot of stake for those professionals, and Christina Kim, the veteran LPGA player, was involved in a bit of a rule situation.

Here’s what happened. Early in the round, she saw a violation from her fellow playing competitors. Essentially what happened was that one of those competitors looked at the caddie of the other competitor on the tee box with a par three, basically asking what that caddie’s player hit. There was a hand signal that came back from the caddie. So Christina Kim made rules officials aware of the rules violation, which technically is her duty to do. You have a right to protect the field, and later in that round, both players, both of the competitors paired along with Christina Kim were penalized two strokes. According to the letter of the law, everything came down the way it was supposed to, but it’s created a lot of hard feelings throughout the world of professional golf and across Twitter.

So let me just explain it to you this way. Maybe this will help you decide how you feel about this situation. As a long-time broadcaster of professional golf and a lot of my time spent on the ground, I often am near a player when they’re hitting. A lot of times it happens on a par three and I look to one of the caddies and they typically will give me a hand signal of what club their player is hitting. That’s how I let the world know what club these players are hitting. So it’s pretty common to see these hand signals flashed around. You just have to decide how you feel about it. A lot of people turn this into a political issue and I definitely don’t think it’s that, but it’s all about your perspective.

If you’re speeding through a neighborhood at 18 miles an hour and that speed limit is 15 miles an hour, from your point of view, if you get a ticket, are you going to think that’s fair? Probably not. But let’s say if you are a parent with young children living in that neighborhood and they often play in and around that street, do you think they feel like you ought to get a speeding ticket for going 18 in a 15? I think probably so. So I think everyone is going to have to decide exactly how they feel about this situation and it’s pretty much split right down the middle.

So hopefully everyone learns something from this. Maybe the rule ends up changing. We’ll just have to wait and find out. Have a good afternoon. I’m going to go take a nap here in Murrells Inlet!