No, this is not a shot tracking bug.
Matt Baldwin, a 38-year-old British player playing on the DP World Tour, did hit an 8-yard tee shot on Thursday at the Betfred British Masters.
Let him explain.
The strange tee shot occurred on The Belfry's 438-yard, par-4 fourth hole, which has a back tee mostly surrounded by water. Baldwin was 1 under through the first three holes, but as he began to swing his driver, something strange happened.
“When I got to the top of my swing, it felt like the glue or the club head was cracking a little bit, so I tried to stop, but momentum kept me swinging and the ball got hit right here (on the inside heel of the clubface) and it went between my legs and almost landed in the water behind me,” Baldwin told the DPWT Social Show on Friday.
Baldwin added that his first reaction was to laugh because he thought he was trying to stop his swing so he could tee it off again without penalty.
“But it turned out,” Baldwin said, “that because I made contact with the ball, it was actually a shot and I had to hit the next one out of the rough about a yard before the tee marker.”
The rules of golf allow a shot to be discarded only in a few circumstances: if a player starts a swing but then stops or intentionally misses the ball on the follow-through, or if a player is taking a practice swing (like Zach Johnson did at the Masters) or accidentally contacts the ball while preparing to hit a shot.
So, Baldwin had bad luck. With 445 yards to the hole, he hit his second shot with a 4-hybrid, 180 yards from the hole, and then missed the green with a 6-iron. He recovered well from there, though, pitching to 10 feet and holed the putt.
“It’s easy to make bogeys,” said Baldwin, who shot 72-68 over 36 holes to finish T-14 on the leaderboard.
