HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC – One golfer’s act of honesty cost him a win on the PGA Tour!
Brian Davis doesn’t exactly carry the same name recognition that say Tiger Woods does. Regardless, he still works hard and on Sunday he was moments away from reaching a professional dream – getting a PGA Tour win. The only problem, he’s one of the good guys and his conscious got the better of him.
Davis was facing Jim Furyk, who does carry a degree of recognition on the Tour, in a playoff at the Verizon Heritage and could smell his first-ever Tour win. Those dreams were shattered when Davis called a violation on himself and basically handed the title over to Furyk.
What happened? Well his approach shot on the first hole of the playoff bounced off the green and made its way to some weeds. When Davis tried to get out of his unideal situation, his club may have grazed a stray weed on his backswing. The problem lies in the rule book and its states that hitting any material around your ball during your backswing constitutes a violation of the rule against moving loose impediments, and is an immediate two-stroke penalty. Davis quite possibly could have gotten away with it, but in ratting himself out he effectively ended the playoff.
Davis called officials over and presented his “case” to them. Officials confirmed on replay, but only after slow-motion, that there was movement and awarded the penalty to Davis. He then conceded the victory to Furyk.
“To have the tournament come down that way is definitely not the way I wanted to win,” Furyk said. “It’s obviously a tough loss for him and I respect and admire what he did.”
What Furyk really means to say is that he respects the fact that Davis made a generous donation of $1.03 million to his bank account by reporting the violation. Regardless, Davis should at least be applauded for doing the honorable thing. Go ahead, applaud, and make him feel better.
… $1.03 million is too much money for me.
