14 Mini-Tour Golfers DQ'd After Playing From Wrong Teebox

14 golfers on the Outlaw Tour were DQ'd after multiple groups teed off from the wrong teebox on a par 3. Pretty crazy. Never heard of this happening before.

Nearly a quarter of the 60 man field didn't realize and continued with the round. Unreal. Couple of articles about it. https://www.golfdigest.com/story/mini-tour-event-features-mass-disqualifications-after-golfers-play-from-the-wrong-tee

Cody Blick's mini-tour DQ: What life is like on golf's margins during a pandemic

LOL, you really can't miss those markers ------- and moved because "someone" else did it first and a bunch of guys just followed? The DQ guys now on the Lemmings Tour!

And one of the DQ guys wants his money back? Haha -- look at those tee markers. Sorry but not working up any sympathy on this one, just chuckling. "But gee the card says x so I'll just figure out some spot that's that far out" even though there are no . . . . . . . tee markers. Okay not all that sorry, it's pretty funny.

Edit: to be clear, my original and continuing reaction is based on my normally, in other contexts, being one of the dumbasses.

Yeah those tee markers are massive. I was reading comments on Twitter about how the tournament staff should've removed the club's tee markers, but the field was small and between public tee times. They couldn't do that.

Surprised the starter didn't say that they'll always play from the "Outlaw markers". That seems pretty standard information to be spoken but ignored by players. lol

Outlaw Tour commissioner has cajones and made the right call.

Whiners STFU.

It hurts when you do something that stupid but all you can do is shrug it off. When your dumb you got to be tough.

I can understand one guy going to the wrong box but 5 consecutive groups? That's 10-15 straight players depending on the groupings. How does that happen? I understand competitive focus but there had to be a caddie or two amongst them no? That's a head shaker for sure.

Right. That's a bunch of dudes on auto-pilot.

Sounds to me like they moved the tees to a right box out of line of sight of all the other tees.

you play in Mickey Mouse events enough and you’ll see everything. The card should have matched the correct tee. The tour has some ownership here too. Why list the yardage if you aren’t abiding by it ? Two wrongs going on here. They should refund the Tours cut of each entrant DQed. That way the winner gets full pay and it’s only the two wrong parties loosing.

For all we know, the previous green/path/terrain led you more so to these incorrect tees.

And if it's backed up, and you see 1-2 groups in front of you all hitting from this tee box, you aren't going to question it.

Without thinking, you will just assume this is the tee box. Especially if you are already caught up/focused on your round and just trying to figure out your next shot

Yep. Especially if the card confirms the back box. As the article says it does.

Come on guys, they use the same markers in every other event and on every hole they played in this one - I'm not claiming I wouldn't have followed along, lol, golf and me doing something dumb go hand in hand all the time (which is why I'm laughing at this). But making up scenarios about the geography of the course to semi-excuse it seems a reach? Their minds appeared to have taken a little vacation, no biggie.

I wasn't presenting those scenarios as being fact or what I thought happened. I was simply making the point that we were not there and there were certainly conditions that we can't possibly be aware of.

So why pretend to be an expert on something I have very few facts about?

Right. But the yardage in the card is weird to be that off for an event. Just think that some of the responsibility lies with the tour. After all. The tour profits off the players on most cases. Why not have them refund their cut to the players who were DQed ? Feels wrong to me that the tour makes money off of poor tournament setup.

Cue Alanis..

Hate when that happens. You play the course, tee marker etc... Not the card. Or something.

Sucks but correct call.

As I understand it the confusion was caused by the score card - the yardage for the hole shown on the score card matched the wrong set of tee markers.

Apparently there was a hold up on the hole as well, so consecutive groups saw the group ahead using the wrong tees and subsequently did the same thing

DQ was the right decision but it leaving multiple tee markers on tee boxes is going to cause confusion

I for one would be shocked if the Outlaw Tour didn’t have a few rules breakers out there. What a superb name for a Golf Tour.

"...but the tournament proceeded as scheduled with the usual precautions. Players took separate carts. The pins were left in, with PVC pipes placed in the cup so the ball doesn’t drop to the bottom. There were plenty of disinfectant wipes handy."

If the precautions are so bad that the ball is prevented from going into the cup then how can you possibly have tournament conditions. Seems like both an unnecessary risk and massive waste of time.

I think it's just the yardage from the tee immediately in front of the back tees. The scorecard shows five tee boxes. I got curious out of boredom and I think this is the hole based on a couple of sites with maps/scorecards. Looks like the only way to play at 222 is from the back tee and guessing without knowing that the "204 plate" is on the next tee forward, seems reasonable, but don't know for sure. The back tee is a little higher than the next one up and the next one up is in the line and a little right as you look down toward the tee. Only a guess, but maybe someone decided to assume they were playing from the back tees, did or didn't comprehend the official markers weren't there, and decided to tee up because it was the back tee and a few groups obviously just went along with it. The Outlaw markers would have been less than 60 feet away and in front of the guys teeing off.

The guys goofed, it's on them under the rules and kind of a silly goof IMO - I don't have anything against them, just a dumb mistake and I can identify with that.

Tour wants to figure out a way to give them money back it wouldn't bother me at all (as long as none of that money comes out of the pockets of the the 75% that played from the right markers on that hole - then it still wouldn't bother me personally, but they would have a legitimate gripe).

Balls still fall into the hole, just not to the bottom. They are still at rest below the lip - holed.

They play that tour on a regular basis. They play 72 holes from the same set of markers on every single hole, on every single day in every single tournament. Why would you then "assume" that on this one hole, on this one day, on this one tournament, you'd play from a place with no Outlaw Tour marker. They are apparently use to having regular course markers on the tees during play. Would you not think to look around for the Outlaw Tour marker? The correct decision was made for the DQ. Just because 16 guys did it does not excuse the mistake.

I'm with the players

You get there and the back tee box - which you get to first - matches the card you are given. You can't see the outlaw markers as they are below and off line

Wrong card = some level of compassion from rules committee in my books

Tour had players play the hole from farther back and could have used discretion and just give penalties and not dq's

Cardy, that is a great point if it was possible.

If DQ wasn't required under the rules or any reasonable interpretation of the rules then agree 100% the "tour" should have found a legal way to penalize vs. the DQ under the circumstances.

Any time I've expressed an honest opinion in the rules section there are always a couple of jokers willing to let me know I'm ignorant and don't have an understanding of the rules (and Sawgrass and antip are examples of how I wish I conducted myself more often, lol, they are gentlemen, but there are some cultish folks over there) so I'm expressing no opinion on whether that would be possible!

Just make sure your opinions are 6 feet from anyone else's. :-)

What's surprising to me is that even after all of the rules changes from last year, that teeing from the wrong box is an auto DQ if you tee off from the next hole. Seems like the spirit of the game could be preserved if you give them a 2 stroke penalty similar to taking an improper drop since they were playing from a more difficult position.

But that just isn't how the rule is written. There's no exception to 6.1b that I can find. Must play from the proper teeing area or you're toast if you don't catch the mistake quickly enough.

i thought there was a committee had discretion thing written into the updated rules

High five on that section comment. There are a couple who must be home bound 24/7 365 for years. They google about researching any question looking for the “i gotcha “ moment. Blank that.

OK but the hole is supposed to be at least 4 inches deep surely this measure, while understandable from the precautions perspective, means it still doesn't meet the requirements.

The hole is still cut 4 inches deep, the ball just doesn’t reach the bottom, and does not have to.

To expand on that, the USGA released something that made it even more clear that this was acceptable and was something that could be used for a posted score. That also included the fact that cups could be raised out of the cup under these specific circumstances, as well. If it's good enough for the USGA, I'm pretty sure it's good enough for the nice folks at the Outlaw Tour.