Opponent’s Honesty Leads to Furyk Win
Opponent’s Honesty Leads to Furyk Win
By all likelihood, Jim Furyk was already on his way to winning the Verizon Heritage on the first playoff hole Sunday evening at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, S.C.
Still, when Furyk officially did claim the title, it didn’t feel like victories are supposed to feel.
“It was an awkward moment,” he said. “An awkward way to win.”
Furyk was on his way to victory because his second shot on No.18, the hole where the picturesque old lighthouse stands guard, had landed on the green and trickled to the back fringe, sitting in wait for a reasonably easy two-putt par. Furyk’s playoff opponent, Brian Davis, meanwhile, had put himself in a far-more challenging predicament in the sudden-death playoff.
Davis, a 35-year-old Englishman seeking his first victory in his sixth season on the PGA Tour, only had an opportunity to hit his third shot because he wasn’t attempting it at high tide.
With his second swing on the par-4 18th Davis had pushed his taylormade golfball left. It kicked left into rocks that border the shoreline of the harbor, and then bounced into the hard, wet sand and clumps of sea grass left behind by a receding water line.
So, at best it was a long shot, but, while no bargain, Davis was remarkably still alive.
At least Davis was until he blasted out of the soggy mess with an extremely fine shot to inside 30 feet of the pin — and promptly summoned Tour tournament director and rules official Slugger White over to call a penalty on himself.
The location from where Davis hit the shot was beyond the hazard stakes. When inside a hazard, a player is prohibited by the Rules of Golf from touching a loose impediment before the shot.
Davis told White that, as he brought his wholesale golf club back during takeaway, he believed the backswing had caused a stalk in a clump of soggy, dead reeds to move.
“I didn’t feel it. But I was pretty sure I saw — I was actually closing my eyes coming down into the sand,” Davis said. “It was one of those things I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.”
Moments later, a television replay confirmed Davis’ fear and the two-stroke penalty made Furyk’s routine two-putt par and second victory of the season almost anticlimactic.
“It was really strange, all these reeds that were loose, most of them were going this way, and this one reed was sticking out just outside his ball (used taylor made golf clubs),” White said. “He looked and looked, and when he took the club away he ticked it. And he immediately came to me — I couldn’t see it. The wind was blowing, so I couldn’t see it against the sand. And he assured me that he ticked it when he took the club away. He called it on himself immediately.”
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