If any golfer needs to be reminded of the need to always, always, ALWAYS follow one of the golden rules of competitive play – read EVERY WORD of the local rules before teeing off – we offer you the story of Anthony Quayle at last week’s Victorian PGA. Championship. The details were originally reported by Martin Blake of PGA Tour Australia with more information from Ryan French at Monday Q Info. Read on with empathy and a little respect for how things ultimately turned out.

Quayle, a 30-year-old playing in his native Australia in an event organized by the PGA Tour of Australasia, was 15 holes into the first round on the Open course at Moonah Links when he found himself asking a question that he should have addressed. the first tee: are we playing favorite lies along the way? That was the impression Quayle, who plays primarily on the Japanese tour and finished T-15 at the 2022 Open Championship, had when he was given the rule sheet before teeing off. But after his playing partner, American Tyler McCumber, asked him something similar, Quayle was forced to check it out. And in doing so, he discovered that the preferred lies were actually in place for only part of the third fairway.

Mortified that he had been wrong all this time, Quayle contacted tour referee and tournament director Heath McLeod. “I didn’t feel comfortable hitting another shot without addressing it,” Quayle told Blake. “I felt like I had done something really wrong. As soon as I realized my stomach hurt, I thought I had done something terribly wrong.”

During the discussion with McLeod, Quayle looked back on his turn and realized that twice he had lifted his ball and placed it more than a few inches from where he had picked up his ball, a once lifted and placed in much the same way and once he had he wasn’t really sure where he had placed it. It was then determined that Quayle would receive two-stroke penalties for any time the ball was not only lifted, but also played from an incorrect location (Rule 9.4) and a one-stroke penalty for the time he put it back in the correct place. In total, Quayle ended up having seven penalty strokes added to his score, posting a 73 instead of 66. (McCumber was also penalized two strokes for making an error on this hole.)

Quayle was candid after the round about the mistake

“The fairways were OK,” he told PGA Tour Australia. “You could see how we might have needed favorite lies because there were a lot of collection areas with divots. Our last three tournaments on tour have been favorites. The document I was given is a small half page document with “favorite lie” highlighted and the length of the score card highlighted.

“This is a huge rookie mistake on my part. I had just assumed that on this tour we were playing a lot of favorite lie. I just haven’t thought about it much. I blame myself now. It turns out that on this document it only said that it was best to be on the third hole in the blue painted area. I guess it was more in the fine print of the document.

McLeod said: “We are proud of the way Anthony handled the situation. As soon as he realized his mistake, he called me and went to green number 15. He immediately took responsibility for his actions and we worked through the four separate occasions where he broke the rules and he accepted the penalty with no problem.

Suffice it to say, Quayle could have let the incident get to him and disrupt him for round two. But that didn’t happen. “After having a little time to process what happened Thursday night, I kind of grew up thinking that ‘let’s treat this as a little challenge and see what we can do.’ To qualify with a seven-stroke penalty is going to be impressive,” he said.

And Quayle did just that, shooting a 67 in the second round to qualify. He kept things going, with weekend rounds of 66 and 69 that saw him finish in third place with a total of 12-under 275, two strokes behind winner Cory Crawford. (Second was McCumber, who finished one stroke behind.)

“After making the cut,” Quayle said, “now it’s about ‘finish as high as possible because it’s going to be pretty impressive wherever I finish this week.’ I kind of want the story to is as good as possible. It might be the one I’ll remember for a long time.