Harrington DQd in Abu Dhabi
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Padraig Harrington has been disqualified from the first event if the year in Abu Dhabi after a super slo-mo camera revealed he’d touched his ball as he marked it and it had moved.
The video evidence came to light almost 24 hours after his ball moved on the 7th green when retrieving his marker.
The offence was not that the ball had moved but that it was not replaced after he moved it. That results in a two-shot penalty. Harrington signed for a three on a hole that should have been scored five. He was kicked out, signing for an incorrect score.
Harrington knew he had touched the ball but deemed that it hadn’t moved. But when rules officials showed him the slow motion footage, it revealed the ball rolled a fraction, thought it wasn’t detetcable by the human eye.
Harrington – who was just behind Charl Schwartzel at the top of the leaderboard after round one, said: “I was aware I hit the ball picking up my coin. I looked down at the time and was pretty sure it had just oscillated and had not moved, so I continued on. In slow motion it’s pretty clear the ball has moved three dimples forward and it’s come back maybe a dimple and a half.
“At the end of the day that’s good enough, but I wouldn’t have done anything differently yesterday – there was nothing I could do about it at that moment in time. If I’d called a referee over it would have been pointless because if he’d asked me where my ball was I’d have said it was there. As far as I was concerned it didn’t move.”
Ref Andy McFee, who also disqualified Harrington 11 years ago, stated: “I got an email from the Tour feedback site just before six o’clock last night.
“I managed to get a look and knew immediately we had an issue. I got all members of the rules committee to look at the tape.
“Because everything was closing down I decided to sleep on it and speak to Padraig first thing this morning.
“It’s a minute movement, but it’s a movement and he never replaced it, so he should have included a two-stroke penalty.
“The fact that he is unaware he moved the ball unfortunately does not help him. Because he signed for a score lower than actually taken the penalty is disqualification.”
It is only two months ago, of course, that Ian Poulter lost a play-off for the Dubai World Championship after he dropped his ball on his marker and it flipped over.