The ball moved, rules chaos followed—and the game changed forever

In all fairness to the USGA and R&A, a major revision to the Rules of Golf was already in the works when the U.S. Open came to Oakmont Country Club in 2016. Still, it’s somewhat amusing to think that a golf ball moving just a fraction of an inch on a breezy summer day was the catalyst for a complete rewrite of the 600-plus-page book.

Looking back on that tournament and what happened to Dustin Johnson in the final round—and to all golfers since—this might have been the rare rules controversy with a happy ending.

To refresh your memory, with more details to come, Johnson was penalized one stroke for having caused his ball to move on the fifth green in the final round, which was a violation of then Rule 18.2. (Spoiler alert: He still won by three shots.) The way the incident was handled by tournament rules officials, not to mention the wording of the rule itself, drew criticism from nearly every corner of the golf world—including inside the USGA’s own offices in Liberty Corner, N.J.

After the event, Mike Davis, then the executive director of the USGA, called it a “God-forsaken rule.” And within six months of the incident, the USGA and R&A announced a complete overhaul of the game’s 34 rules along with its even more complex decisions and clarifications.

“Nothing was sacred. Everything was on the table,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s chief championships officer, who was then managing director for rules, competitions and equipment standards.

If you’re new-ish to the game, you might not even realize that it used to be a penalty if your ball moved on a putting green after you grounded your club, even if you had nothing to do with that movement. You also might not know that in more than one instance, the rules makers tried to do the right thing by adjusting a rule that clearly seemed unfair. At the start of 2016, for example, grounding your club no longer triggered an automatic penalty. Instead, it was only a penalty if it was “more likely than not” that you caused the ball to move.

Fast forward to today and the new Rules of Golf, which debuted on Jan. 1, 2019, and you have to consult Rule 13.1d for what happens when a ball moves on the putting green. It’s no longer a penalty if you accidentally cause your ball to move. You just put the ball back and play on. And if wind or some other natural force moves your ball, you either play it from its new position or replace it on its original spot if you’ve already marked, lifted and replaced it. Again, no penalty.

Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s chief governance officer, was smack in the middle of the Johnson incident at Oakmont nine years ago as he oversaw the Rules of Golf from 2011-2018. He says what happened to Johnson certainly played a big role in accelerating the adjustment to then Rule 18.2 and also to how rules decisions are made in USGA competitions. “There was a sense of urgency,” Pagel says. “We [had] to be better.” And doing better started with the adoption of a Model Local Rule in 2017 before it became Rule 13.1d in the major revision.

FROM THE ARCHIVE: What Really Happened to DJ at Oakmont

D.J. AND THE DETAILS OF 18-2

So what happened to Johnson that was so bad? Here’s a more in-depth look at his final round at Oakmont and its aftermath.

First, playing hours before Johnson teed off, Romain Wattel of France had his ball move on the second hole at Oakmont. He had grounded his putter for a short-downhill par putt, and after addressing it for roughly five seconds, he noticed it had moved. The referee in that group said there was no penalty as it wasn’t Wattel’s fault. It was breezy and the downhill lie seemed to have caused the movement.

Then a similar situation occurred about six hours later when Johnson, who was playing with Lee Westwood in the second-to-last group of the day (the final group was Shane Lowry and Andrew Landry) had an uphill four-footer for par on the fifth hole. Johnson took two practice strokes fairly close to his ball, grounded the toe of his putter near the ball and then set the head behind the ball without grounding it. In that brief instance that Johnson lifted his putter from the side of the ball to the position hovering behind it, his ball moved backward just a touch.

To his credit, Johnson stepped away and summoned a referee walking with his pairing, Mark Newell, to let him know that his ball moved but it wasn’t his fault. He even pointed out that he didn’t ground his club, not realizing that Rule 18.2 had changed at the start of the year and that wouldn’t have triggered an automatic penalty. Westwood also said he agreed that Johnson did not cause the ball to move. After a brief conversation, Newell told Johnson to play on without penalty.

This is the part of the story when things got ugly.

While Johnson and Westwood continued to play the front nine, the USGA’s Craig Winter was reviewing video of the incident and informed Pagel that he thought there was a violation of Rule 18.2. Pagel, after reviewing the video with a couple of other key officials, agreed, and they finally caught up with Johnson on the 12th tee to let him know what was happening.

The revision to Rule 18.2 that took effect on Jan. 1 of that year was key to all of this. If it was “more likely than not” that a player caused the ball to move, then it was a penalty. Translation: If there was merely a 51-percent chance Johnson’s actions shifted the ball, the USGA had no choice but to override Newell’s on-course ruling. Pagel says they felt that Johnson’s actions of making practice strokes near the ball, then grounding the toe of the putter next to it, and then beginning to address it, which all happened quickly, qualified as a “more likely than not” situation.

As tough as it was to inform Johnson of the take-back on the fifth-hole exoneration from Newell, the USGA made things even more uncomfortable by letting D.J. know they wouldn’t make a final determination until after the round. They wanted Johnson to have a chance to watch the video and further comment on his actions. This left him—and the other golfers on the leaderboard—in limbo as to where they stood in the hunt for one of the game’s biggest trophies.

Several pros, including Rory McIlroy and Webb Simpson, later commented on how outrageous it was to make Johnson wait. But at the time, Johnson shrugged it off: “I just told myself, We’ll worry about it when we get done,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to be penalized. They said they were going to review. There was nothing I could do about it. Just focus on this next shot. I tried to do that from there, all the way to the house. It was just me and the golf course.”

As stated earlier, this story ends with a smile. Johnson got the penalty stroke right after his round concluded, but he still shot a one-under 69 including an amazing birdie on the final hole to beat Lowry, Sergio Garcia and Scott Piercy by three shots. Did D.J. care about the penalty stroke? That question was rhetorical. Still, it’s compelling to think what might have been if the penalty had more of an effect on the outcome.

As for the USGA and how it reviews penalties during its tournaments, that also has greatly changed, Pagel says.

Just a year after Johnson’s win, when the Open was held at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, the USGA dropped its practice of having rules officials walk with each group and instead implemented “stationary rules officials.” It also set up video-review locations in multiple spots on the course to ensure it would not take nearly as long to let a player know that a penalty might have occurred. The reason it took so long to get to Johnson in 2016 was because Oakmont is a huge property with thousands of spectators on it, and you literally have to cross over the Pennsylvania Turnpike to reach parts of the course. Bottleneck city.

Also, Pagel says he has been the final decision maker, the “chief,” at all major USGA tournaments since Oakmont to avoid long, drawn-out debates between committee members. Previously, a group of five had to review incidents and discuss them together before making a call. Now, if a decision needs to happen fast, Pagel has the authority to go it alone. All of this certainly reaffirms that good organizations learn from their mistakes, he says.

Four weeks after Johnson’s victory, at the Open Championship at Royal Troon, Mike Davis spoke on the topic again in a way that brings us to how the rotation of a golf ball can truly matter for all golfers: “No one will ever know if Dustin caused the ball to move, but anyone who thinks the rule wasn’t applied correctly doesn’t know the rules. If we had not applied that penalty, we could never have lived with ourselves. But the issue is with the rule itself. It forces an official into the most difficult situation—adjudicating the weight of evidence. We will learn from it, and golf will learn from it. One of our major goals is to modernize and simplify the rules, not just for tournament play, for everyday play. And the game will benefit in the long run.”

Sometimes the smallest things can move mountains.