Rule change - armchair referees

BBC website reports that any rules infractions should be picked up by a TMO and not people at home. Story here

I wonder how Lexi is feeling?


I was never quite sure how genuine the "call ins" were, and who you would call even if you did want to phone in. But thankfully this loophole can't be used anymore. You either have an official video ref procedure or go with whatever the ref/players notice at the time.

The reason the f1 champion gets the trophy weeks later at an event that is barely covered is because of the history of regulation infractions coming to light after the event. Imagine how crap it would be if the majors were handed out in December?

Good. It was always insane allowing your average armchair punter to have any influence

That was about time...

But...

Phone calls will still happen (or social media posts) and the TV watching officials may feel/be obliged to look at those instances, in which case very little may change. They certainly won't want to miss something someone else has picked up as that would damage their credibility. So, being cynical it may result in very little change.

Although the "buy one get one free" penalty for signing for a wrong score goes away, which is good for those genuine errors/innocent mistakes but beneficial for any of those that do deliberately infringe, should there be (m)any.

Yes but the question is whether this is better than before. And IMO it is. The R&A and USGA have realised that times have changed and that they need to adapt.

There will always be social media and public reaction, just look at football. But for the fans I think it'll be easier to deal with a cheat - especially in an individual sport - than with anachronistic rules.

navyblueshorts wrote:Good. It was always insane allowing your average armchair punter to have any influence

As I said above I am not convinced it was average punters "calling in". Do you think it was eagle eyed fans or more senior individuals?

McLaren wrote:

navyblueshorts wrote:Good. It was always insane allowing your average armchair punter to have any influence

As I said above I am not convinced it was average punters "calling in". Do you think it was eagle eyed fans or more senior individuals?

I don't care who it was. It's insane, has never been applied to everyone in the field and I'm glad it's going. Let's extrapolate a bit - referee misses a dive in critical Premiership game, awards penalty and title awarded as a result. Punter phones in and points out it was a blatant dive w/ benefit of slo-mo replays. Decision reversed? It doesn't happen in any other sport - it should never have been allowed for golf.

My take would be that when social media became so pervasive that the officials running an event couldn't fail to be informed of a rules infraction seen on tv, via monitoring of twitter etc and not direct communication with the officials, they felt they had better do something to ward of criticism. So hence the so called viewer call ins begin as a route to correct the ills being discussed by the viewers while the event is taking place.

Without social media the infraction noticed by a fan would just turn up two months after the fact in a letter to golf monthly, by which point even those that read it wouldn't care.

Good!

About time they changed this.

Although, who are these armchair viewers? And how did they phone in? is there a contact page for John Paramour on the ET website?

Or do you just ring the main number for the ET? Dial 1 for the pro shop, dial 2 for the bar, dial 3 to report a rules infraction.

raycastleunited wrote:About time they changed this.

Although, who are these armchair viewers? And how did they phone in? is there a contact page for John Paramour on the ET website?

Or do you just ring the main number for the ET? Dial 1 for the pro shop, dial 2 for the bar, dial 3 to report a rules infraction.

armchair@europeantour.com