After a rules misunderstanding, World No. 3 golfer is hit with 7 penalty strokes

A strange year for Lydia Ko has gotten even stranger.

On the eleventh gap through the final round of the Dana Open Sunday, Ko marked her ball as if she was going to scrub and exchange it, considering most well-liked lies have been in play for the ultimate spherical.

Only one downside. Most popular lies have been in play through the fourth spherical, however simply not on the eleventh gap. Or many of the holes at Highland Meadows Golf Membership, in actual fact. Even worse for Ko, this wasn’t the primary time she had made the error both.

Let’s return a bit.

With the forecast calling for heavy rain Saturday — that may finally droop play for practically 4 hours — LPGA officers made the choice to play most well-liked lies for the whole thing of the third spherical.

Then for the ultimate spherical, most well-liked lies have been solely in impact on Nos. 1 and 10, in keeping with an LPGA spokesperson.

Ko was unaware of this and performed most well-liked lies on the third, seventh and ninth fairways, going par-par-bogey on the three holes as a part of a birdie-less opening 9 of two-over 36.

It wasn’t until the eleventh when a guidelines official was notified Ko had been taking part in most well-liked lies when she known as for the ruling solely after marking her ball. She ended up getting two-stroke penalties for every of the primary thrice she performed most well-liked lies on the entrance 9 after which bought a seventh penalty stroke on 11.

In keeping with the spokesperson, since Ko didn’t exchange her ball to its authentic place on the entrance 9, she was penalized for taking part in a ball from the flawed spot every time below rule 14.7a. Nevertheless, on the eleventh, she was alerted to the infraction earlier than putting her ball once more. She changed it to its authentic place, that means she solely bought solely a one-stroke penalty for intentionally touching and transferring her ball below rule 9.4b.

Her pars on 3 and seven grew to become doubles whereas a bogey on 9 was a nasty triple. Ko rapidly went from 4 below for the event to 2 over. She managed to make par on the eleventh and birdied the seventeenth to shoot a 78, ending T65. She dropped 41 spots from the place she had began the day.

It’s the second such instance of guidelines confusion resulting in a penalty on the LPGA Tour in as many weeks, albeit not as extreme. Natthakritta Vongtaveelap was disqualified through the first spherical of the U.S. Girls’s Open after her caddie mistakenly used a range finder. Vary finders are sometimes allowed on the LPGA, however not on the U.S. Girls’s Open or AIG Girls’s Open.

The weird penalty continues a down year for Ko who returned to form in 2022profitable thrice and reclaiming World No. 1. Regardless of a win on the Women European Tour in January, she has solely completed higher than T31 one time, coming in her first begin in February when she completed T6.

Jack Hirsh

Golf.com Editor

Jack Hirsh is an assistant editor at GOLF. A Pennsylvania native, Jack is a 2020 graduate of Penn State College, incomes levels in broadcast journalism and political science. He was captain of his highschool golf crew and nonetheless *tries* to stay aggressive in native amateurs. Earlier than becoming a member of GOLF, Jack spent two years working at a TV station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as Multimedia Journalist/reporter, but in addition producing, anchoring and even presenting the climate. He might be reached at jack.hirsh@golf.com.