Golf star Anthony Quayle suffered a horror mistake at the Victorian PGA Championship that cost him the tournament. The Australian failed to read the small print in a document handed to him by tournament officials and ultimately missed out on lifting the trophy.
Quayle, a joint-15th-place finisher at The Open two years ago, had presumed that tournament rules followed three previous competitions he has played in Australia over the past four weeks. However, despite having preferred lies in play at those tournaments, he soon found out that the rules were different at the Victorian PGA Championship.
The preferred lie actually came on the third hole in a specified area, something that had been noted on the document handed to the 30-year-old at the start. On the 15th hole, Quayle asked playing partner Tyler McCumber if he could lift, clean and replace. McCumber said he could - but the document confirmed that he could not.
"I’ve been doing it all day,” Quayle told PGA Australia. “Turns out on that document it only said it was preferred lie on the third hole in the blue painted area. I guess that sort of sat more in the fine print of the document.
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“I had just assumed on this tour we play preferred lie a lot. I just didn’t think too much more of it. I’m kicking myself now.
“The fairways were decent. You could see how maybe we needed preferred lies because there were a lot of collection areas with divots. Our last three tournaments on tour have been preferred lie.
“The document I was handed is a little half-page document that is highlighted ‘preferred lie’ and highlighted scorecard length. It’s a massive rookie error on my part.”
Quayle informed tournament director and referee Heath McLeod immediately after realising his error. He was penalised seven shots for four breaches of the rules – two for each of the three shots he hit from the fairway having replaced his ball. The penalty of a further shot was due to another error near a green because he replaced the ball in the same spot.
McCumber was also penalised two shots.
“I didn’t feel comfortable hitting another shot without addressing it,” Quayle continued. “I felt like I’d done something really wrong. As soon as I realized, I felt sick in the stomach, I thought I’d done something terribly wrong.”
“After I had a bit of time to process what happened, I grew the opinion of, ‘Let’s treat this as a bit of a challenge and see what we can do.’ Making the cut with a seven-stroke penalty is going to be impressive.”
McCumber finished one shot behind Corey Crawford, who received the £196,000 ($250,000) first prize. Quayle finished a shot further back in third.
Quayle was still able to enjoy a strong finish after composing himself. He said: “After I made the cut, [I thought], now it’s [a case of] finishing as high as I possibly can because it’s going to be pretty impressive wherever I finish. I wanted the story to be as good as it can be going forward. It could be one that I remember for a long time.”
