This or that. Many of the decisions we make on a daily basis are binary in nature. Yes or no, black or white, paper or plastic. We get used to those options. In golf, however, there are often 3 options, and Jordan Speith took advantage of that third option last week on the 13th hole.
I missed all of the shenanigans. The 20 minute ruling, the frantic search for the ball, camera cranes viewing it all from high above. I was a passenger in the back seat of my father-in-law's car as they drove my wife and I down to Charleston, SC (where I did not play golf). By the time I arrived at the hotel, Jordan was accepting the trophy. I didn't get a chance to check out how he won until that evening, and the mess he got himself in was front and center.
You're in the final group of a major tournament, leaking oil again and hitting poor shots. You're tied with the only guy who can probably beat you. Feels like deja vu.
I've been critical of Jordan's decision making - specifically of his choice of play when it came to the 12th hole at Augusta two years ago. I really thought (of course, after the fact) that Jordan should have re-teed after dumping his ball in the water. Instead he elected to drop in wet, thick grass and ended up making a famous 7 on that beautiful par 3. Maybe Jordan's been busy in the rule book, because he definitely was fully aware of all of his options when it came to playing his ball as it lay on the back side of that dune on the 13th at Royal Birkdale. And let's review those....
He could have played the ball as it lay. Just to get to the fairway 40 yards away would have been too much to ask. I never really saw if that would have been an option, but I inferred that Jordan probably didn't even think he could have advanced the ball. Therefore, he declared the ball unplayable.
Now, there are 3 options available to the player in that situation. The most common is to find an area within 2 club lengths (80 inches is proposed in the 2019 rules) of the ball's location (no closer to the hole) and drop (from shoulder height (or lower in 2019)) the ball within the area. Jordan apparently felt that dropping the ball on the back of that dune might have meant he still didn't have the ability to hack the ball out. The second option would have been to return to where the stroke was made (in this case the tee box) and hit again. He'd then be laying 3 and still wouldn't be any where near the green, and the way his driver was working, he might have duplicated the initial drive. The third option is to draw an imaginary line between the ball's location and the green and drop anywhere on that line behind the ball location. That line extended onto the practice area which allowed Jordan to drop onto well-groomed sod. There were some interference issues with trailers, etc., but Jordan kept his head, played a great shot that ended up short of the green, chipped and putted out for an unbelievable bogey.
How often do we end up in a bad situation on the golf course and don't remember all of the options available to us? It pays to know, and Jordan Speith is smiling all the way to the bank, Claret Jug in hand.