Why Wyndham Clark's 60 at Pebble Beach Shouldn't Be the Course Record
Every Monday Alex Miceli will share what he learned from the previous week in golf. Or, in this case, Tuesday, as Alex was traveling Monday from the Monterey Peninsula to Las Vegas for LIV Golf's second tournament this week.
Wyndham Clark’s 60 was special last week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am—especially if you followed the last three holes where he had three birdie putts narrowly miss.
If any of those had dropped, he would have recorded a 59 and had they all gone, a 57.
Golf is usually a game of ifs and buts and if you play long enough you realize it's a matter of whether the putts fall or not.
Considering that Clark made over 189 feet of putts on Saturday, I think he did just fine with the flatstick.
Wyndham Clark's putter was on fire Saturday in a round of 60 that turned out to be the final round at Pebble Beach.
Douglas Stringer/Icon Sportswire
But something that came out of that 12-under 60 was a bit fishy to me.
For the first three rounds, the PGA Tour let competitors play "ball in hand" due to the wet and muddy conditions, which was the correct call. No argument there.
But what I learned is that no matter if you have ball in hand or not, if you shoot the best score recorded on a course, you have the course record.
I understand it’s the best score, but should it be a course record?
My contention is it should not.
A course record comes when you play the ball as it lies and not get to pick it up, dry it off and place it back within the area of where you picked it up from.
Golf is an outdoor sport and the rules allow for competition in poor, wet and muddy conditions.
If you decide you still need to allow players to pick the ball up, they should forfeit certain potential benefits of playing the ball down, one being that a course record cannot be set that day.
In track and field, races are held if wind is at runners' backs but if that tailwind is measured at more than 2 meters per second the result cannot be a considered a record. A race win, yes. A record, no—not a world record, Olympic record or a venue record, even if it’s the lowest result ever recorded for that event.
But I learned that golf does not have such a rule, in fact no parameters seem to exist to determine a course record.
Clark fairly won the weather-shortened event, no question, but he should not be credited with the course record for his Saturday 60. In my mind he shot the best round ever at Pebble Beach, but it’s not the course record.
