It’s starting to become a weekly occurrence on the PGA Tour. In three of the last five tournaments, a player has signed an incorrect scorecard and been disqualified as a result. This week’s culprit at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas was Scott Piercy.
He would’ve missed the 36-hole cut, which came at 1-over 141, anyway, having shot a pair of 72s, but this is becoming “a thing” on the Tour and it’s not a good look. Last week, Y.E. Yang was guilty of the same mistake at the 103rd PGA Championship, signing for a 4 on the par-4 10th when he actually made a 5. A few weeks before that, Scott Harrington would have been several shots too many in order to stick around and play on the weekend at the Valspar Championship.
It continues to be confounding why signing an incorrect scorecard (Rule 3.3b) is still treated as if it’s the early 20th century when in today’s day and age every shot is measured by ShotLink and most likely recorded. It’s almost equally hard to explain why players continue to make scoring mistakes. These circumstances where a player knows he’s going to miss the cut is a sign of disrespect to the game and one of the bedrocks of the game – keeping an honest scorecard and attesting to it at the end of the round. Take a minute, check the math and sign for the correct score. This isn’t rocket science but as long as it remains a Rule it should be treated as such. None of these three players made an attempt to play fast and loose with the Rules, but that doesn’t make their actions acceptable.
