Unfortunate Moments PGA Tour Pros Went Through Due to Insane Rules in 2024, Ranked

Do you think the PGA Tour rules are unusual? While the answer may vary from person to person, we witnessed a few incidents this year that seemed pretty unusual to us. As it happened, the golfers not only ended up receiving penalties at various tournaments but even one of them was disqualified from the tournament.

5) Matt Fitzpatrick was not permitted to replace the cracked club
It happened at the FedEx Cup BMW Championship. Fitzpatrick noticed a crack in his Titleist TSi3 driver on the eighth tee. He later called an official seeking to replace that crack under the USGA’s Model Local Rule G-9. However, his request was denied, and the officials said there wasn’t significant damage to consider a replacement.

As per the rules, if a player’s club is “broken or significantly damaged” during a round by the player or caddie and it isn’t due to abuse, the player is allowed to replace the club with any other club under Rule 4.1b(4). But it didn’t happen in the case of Matt Fitzpatrick. The golfer was frustrated over the matter and said, “This is outrageous. It’s an absolute joke. There’s an obvious crack there that’s causing a defect of the ball flight. . . . So, I’m going to have to use 3-wood the rest of the day?” as revealed on Golf Digest.

4) Jordan Spieth’s disqualification due to signing an incorrect scorecard
Strange, isn’t it? But this is exactly what happened with Spieth during the Genesis Invitational this year in February. It happened at the par-3 fourth hole during the third round; the golfer had made the bogey, but he signed for a par. He missed the left of the green and chipped to 4 feet but missed the putt and later left the scoring area before being notified of the error and ended up disqualified from the tournament.

Following this incident, Jordan Spieth shared a post on X taking full responsibility for the error, saying, “Today, I signed for an incorrect scorecard and stepped out of the scoring area. After thinking, I went through all the procedures to make sure it was correct. Rules are rules, and I take full responsibility.”

3) Rory McIlroy received a 2-stroke penalty at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
During the first round of the tournament, Rory McIlroy was playing his 15th hole of the day. It was looking good for him as he had a 6-stroke lead. However, after he bogeyed on the par-4 6th, his tee shot took a bad drop on the par-5 7th, as per rules officials. As it happened, he received a two-stroke penalty for the incident.

McIlroy thought he could drop with one club length, as Rule 19.2b suggested, but he wasn’t aware that the rule had already changed before the 2023 season. Yes, you read that right; his penalty was under rule 14.3b, which says McIlroy was not entitled to a club length. When asked about the situation, the Irishman revealed he wasn’t aware of the rule change.

“I took an unplayable on 7 and I took it back on-line. Then, unbeknownst to me, the rule changed in January 2023, where you used to be able to come back on line and take a club length either side. That was changed in 2019 to be able to do that. I wasn’t aware that rule was changed again in 2023, so I took a drop thinking of the 2019 rules when everything was sort of changed—not knowing that the rule was changed again in 2023—so got a two-stroke penalty there,” said Rory McIlroy.

2) Austin Eckroat’s penalty at THE PLAYERS Championship
Who would have thought 10 seconds would lead to a penalty? Well, even Eckroat had no idea about this at THE PLAYERS Championship this year. It happened on the par-5 11th hole at TPC Sawgrass. After he made the shot, the ball was on the hole’s edge for around 30 seconds before it finally fell in.

However, it was still a stroke penalty for the golfer just because the ball took over 10 seconds to drop in the hole after Eckroat reached it. Later the PGA Tour shared a post on X captioning “Since the ball took longer than 10 seconds to drop, a stroke was added to Austin Eckroat’s score and was counted as a par.”

1) Sahith Theegala called himself a 2-shot penalty.
The unusualness of the rule was most recently seen at the Tour Championship. Sahith Theegala was in a bunker on the 4th hole, and, while taking his shot, he thought he might have brushed a few grains of sand during his backswing. Although he didn’t actually feel it, it appeared that some sand grains had shifted. Interestingly, even the rules officials couldn’t point out that something like that happened.

Later, the golfer himself called the officials and explained the situation and ended up receiving a penalty. Later, his girlfriend Juju revealed that “If he hadn’t, his eye test would have shown nothing, so he wouldn’t have gotten the two-shot penalty.”

Sahith Theegala self-reported a two-stroke penalty for touching the sand with his club during his backswing.

He currently moves from -13 to -11, but will have the opportunity to review the penalty with a rules official following his round. pic.twitter.com/rLAgGJGZ5c

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 31, 2024

So it all happened because Theegala himself pointed it out. Indeed, he didn’t suffer much because of that two-shot penalty, but this situation remains unusual in terms of the PGA Tour ruling.