GREENSBORO, N.C. — Justin Thomas sought relief after he fanned his tee shot 30 yards to the right on the ninth hole at Sedgefield Country Club and it landed underneath a tree. But a PGA Tour rules official denied the request for a free drop.
Thomas called for a referee to determine whether a scoreboard was in his line of sight. Out came Tour official Pete Lis, who heard his plea and concluded that from his lie behind a tree a scoreboard wasn’t on his intended line of play.
“I feel like you’re not understanding what I’m saying,” Thomas said. “I’ve had it multiple times where a grandstand is in my way and don’t get relief.”
“It’s not on your line of play right now,” Lis said. “You wouldn’t because you can’t get the ball to finish on the line with hole.”
Thomas accepted the decision and punched out from the pine straw and made one of his two bogeys in a round of 66 that lifted him into a tie for 11th as he battles to make the FedEx Cup Playoffs. It was a classic example of a player trying to use the Rules of Golf to their advantage. Thomas was wise to ask.
“You get rulings sometimes where you almost feel bad that it’s happening, and I truly felt like that was going to be one of those scenarios. It’s just weird. It was between me and the hole, and I just had situations before where stuff like that’s happened. It’s not necessarily in your way, but because it’s between you, you get relief,” he explained. “It was just because the tree was there. It was one of those things like you kind of have your tail tucked between your legs asking for relief because it would only happen in a situation like this. But at the same time, I’m always going to ask because you never know, I could have gotten a drop and would have been able to hit on the green. So worth a shot.”
One day earlier, Thomas was granted a ruling in his favor that allowed both he and Adam Scott, who was playing in the same group, to drop in the fairway rather than the rough after they drove into the water on the eighth hole.
“I think drops get abused a decent bit and we’re not those guys, but we just wanted to – we needed to make sure that it was done correctly because that’s not – that wasn’t in the nature of it, we just wanted to make sure all was OK,” he said on Friday.