Rafael Cabrera-Bello attempts a birdie putt on Friday at the 2020 Wyndham Championship.
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Golf is a game where heartbreak lurks around every corner and comes in all shapes and sizes. One particular, painful but familiar scenario is when you hit a near-perfect putt, only to see your ball suddenly stop at the edge of the hole.
If your ball eventually falls, though, that pain quickly turns into a unique form of jubilation and relief. This was the case with Rafael Cabrera-Bello on Friday at the Wyndham 2020 championship.
But there is a wrinkle in Cabrera-Bello’s case that makes him particularly noteworthy: his ball remained on the edge of the hole for at least 25 seconds before falling to the bottom of the cup.
Playing the par-3 seventh hole in the second round, Cabrera-Bello faced a 19’4 ″ birdie putt to move to four-down. His right-to-left putt plotted beautifully all the way, rolling at perfect speed and on the right line to let the break drop him into the back right of the hole.
But then the ball stopped and the wait began. As Cabrera-Bello started walking towards his ball, Nick Faldo recounted the moment on the telecast.
“Wait a minute, I could have sworn I saw a dimple move, come on,” Faldo said. “Which way does the Earth turn?”
Just when Faldo stopped talking, the ball miraculously rocked and fell for a birdie 2.
Take a look below.
It was a great result for Cabrera-Bello, but the incident raised a big question: if he waited nearly 30 seconds for his ball to move, why wasn’t he charged a penalty?
The answer lies in the subjective nature of the rule.
Rule 13.3a of the golf rules – “Waiting time to see if the protruding hole will fall into the hole” – states: “If any part of a player’s ball protrudes from the edge of the hole, the player is allowed a reasonable time to reach the hole and another 10 seconds to wait to see if the ball will fall into the hole. “If it goes down within that time, it counts.
If, however, the ball falls after that “reasonable” period of time has elapsed, “the player was punctured with the previous stroke, but gets a penalty shot added to the score for the hole. “
As Cabrera-Bello started slowly making his way to the hole after the putt and didn’t get close to his ball quickly and then waited for more than 10 seconds, he didn’t get a penalty stroke and got a 2 on the scoreboard. .
There’s no question that a judgment call is involved here, but if you watch the video for yourself, the amount of time that goes by seems really “reasonable,” though others may disagree.
