Inconsistencies mean blunder was always on the cards

Mark Roe's disqualification from the 132nd Open Championship on Saturday meant that a stalwart campaigner on the European Tour was robbed of possibly the greatest day in his career. After a 67 in the third round, Roe finished at one over par and would have been paired with Tiger Woods in the penultimate group yesterday.

That the 40-year-old from Sheffield was sitting at home yesterday watching on television was because he and Jesper Parnevik, his third-round playing partner, did not exchange their scorecards on the first tee.

Their scores ended up on the wrong cards and the mistake was not picked up early enough as it was with Phillip Price and Stuart Appleby, when the Australian realised the error just before Price left the scoring hut.

There was no disputing what Roe had scored, nor any suggestion that he had in any way tried to seek an advantage. That a bureaucratic error led to him and Parnevik being thrown out of the championship can make golf look absurd and not a little petty.

"When there are scorecard irregularities, it can seem ridiculous," admitted John Paramor, the chief referee for the European Tour. "But it is a basic principle of the game that every player is responsible for his own score."

Golf is perhaps the only sport where even at the highest professional level it is the players who are responsible for keeping score rather than some other official. The rules are written so as to cover not just the Open Championship, but also a club medal or any organised competition.

What must be looked at again and again are the procedures put in place to make sure those rules are enforced. As there is no overall, worldwide governing body for the game, these can differ depending on whether the event is under the jurisdiction of the Royal and Ancient, who organise the Open, the US Golf Association, the European or US Tours and so on.

In the United States, for example, the starter tends to give a competitor the card of the playing partner whose scores he will be marking. Here, a player is given his own card and then the players exchange them. This is not something that is usually forgotten. Any club golfer knows it is all part of the first-tee rites.

Once in the recorder's hut after the round, a player has responsibility for checking two things. The first is that it is his card, identified by his name and signature, and the other is that the score on each hole is not lower than that actually scored (Rule 6-6d).

On only one hole - but that was enough - Parnevik bettered Roe's score otherwise Roe could have remained in the championship but with the 81 that the Swede had scored.

Peter Dawson, the secretary of the Royal and Ancient, called Roe's disqualification a "tragedy. We have checking procedures in the recorder's hut which broke down," he said. "We have to take part of the blame, but not the responsibility. The rules are there to protect the field of 156 players."

The checking system usually employed by the R and A may well be more detailed than at other tournaments, but the key to the issue may be more standardisation across all the leading tournaments. Often a player is asked such basic questions as: "Is this your card?" and "Is this your signature?"

Often the answers are automatic, occasionally abusively dismissive. It was the same when the starter used to ask players on the first tee whether they had checked they had 14 clubs in their bag. Professional players did not always appreciate an apparently demeaning question from someone who was probably blazered and whom they never saw apart from perhaps at the Open.

When the procedure was discontinued, it was not long afterwards that Ian Woosnam played the first hole at Royal Lytham with 15 clubs and had to be penalised two shots. Standardising the personnel involved, as well as the procedures, might help the players get to know familiar faces, and their specific roles, on the tours each week.

Each of the majors tend to guard their territory. But it is now routine for the leading rules officials, like Paramor, Andy McFee from the European Tour and others from America, to work at each of the majors, particularly in delicate areas like timing the players when they are on the clock for slow play.

And the introduction of the World Championships has led to the European and US Tours working closer together. Recently the American circuit switched to the recording system used over here.

The precise moment when a possible rules violation comes to light is vitally important. A scorecard problem, or a penalty which the player may not have known about, can be sorted out even after the card has been signed and handed over as long as the player has not left the recording area. After that, if there is a problem, a player has to be disqualified for signing for a wrong score.

Padraig Harrington, then leading by five strokes, was disqualified just prior to the final round of the Benson and Hedges International in 2000 when it was discovered he had not signed his first-round card. Michael Campbell, who was playing with Harrington and Jamie Spence that day, had signed it before realising it was not his card.

Roberto de Vicenzo remains the most famous casualty of a scorecard error in the 1968 US Masters. As seen on television, de Vicenzo birdied the 17th at Augusta but his playing partner, Tommy Aaron wrote down a four instead of a three. De Vicenzo did not notice when checking his card and his score had to stand, meaning he lost by one shot to Bob Goalby instead of being in a play-off.

De Vicenzo's reaction, in his broken English, was the much quoted: "What a stupid I am." The chief referee that day was Isaac Grainger, a former president of the US Golf Association. He called the decision "the most difficult but also the easiest I ever had to make. It was a really sad thing, but he was quite a gentleman. I remember I had dinner with him and when he left he said, 'I am sorry I caused you so much trouble'."

Roe took his shattering blow with equal dignity, but that must not stop all golf administrators working together to make sure it never happens again.