Scottie Scheffler cruised to victory at the Hero World Challenge, but Sunday was not without some drama.
Collin Morikawa vented over rules officials who interrupted his pre-round warmup to let him know he had been given a two-stroke penalty.
On Saturday, Morikawa’s caddie, Jonathan Jakovac, had used a level on the practice green and put some notations in the book.
According to new rules, such notes can only come from traditional methods, without outside devices.
PGA Tour rules official Stephen Cox informed Morikawa of the violation 15 minutes before his final round.
“We made the mistake,” Morikawa said, according to The Guardian. “From our understanding it was fine to use a level on the practice green and see how putts break and write that down. Obviously it’s not.
“Stephen said apparently to JJ this morning that it was a gray area in all this. Why are there gray areas? There shouldn’t be gray areas in the rules, right? That’s what rules are for. I was a little mad at Stephen. He told us to meet him in the locker room. I was waiting in there for around five minutes and he didn’t show up and this was midway through my warmup. If you are going to tell me some news, I think you should show up on time.”
Matt Fitzpatrick played with Morikawa on Saturday and reported the breach to PGA officials that night, according to the Golf Channel.
“I asked Coxy just to clarify what the situation was,” Fitzpatrick said. “I asked the question and he was like, ‘Well, now you’ve asked the question, I need you to tell me what’s going on.’ That was it. Listen, it’s nothing personal. Whether it was Tiger [Woods] or whoever, it’s just I wanted to know because I would have used it earlier this year.”
Morikawa finished the tournament 12-under and in seventh place, eight strokes behind Scheffler.
“[Morikawa] was very frustrated, it’s a very complicated rule,” Cox said. “Obviously, when we implemented it back in 2022 there was a huge amount of [green-reading] information.”
The event featured Woods’ return to tournament play following ankle surgery after withdrawing from The Masters.
Woods finished 18th in the 20-man field but looked to be in good shape as he aims to play in one tournament per month.
“Just like I said to you guys on Tuesday, I’m curious … what this is going to look like,” Woods said. “I haven’t done it in a while — I haven’t done it with my ankle the way it is now and I was excited each and every day to kind of get through it and kind of start piecing rounds together again. I haven’t done this in a long time, so it was fun to feel that again.”
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