Hideki Matsuyama disqualified from Memorial
Matsuyama during the second round of the 2021 Memorial Tournament. Photo by Ken Tishenkel/Columbus Wired.
Hideki Matsuyama’s 2022 Memorial Tournament has already come to an end.
The 2014 tournament champion was disqualified after only nine holes of golf when it was discovered that his 3-wood had an illegal substance on the face of the club.
The PGA Tour’s Chief Referee, Steve Rintoul, made an announcement to the media and said they had received word from another “member” of the golf community that Matsuyama was potentially using an unauthorized club. The informing person also included a picture of the club which had been posted online. Rintoul said he wasn’t clear what website or social media source they had been posted to but that the informant notified them at 1 p.m.: right after Matsuyama had teed off for the day on No. 1.
The 3-wood is what he teed off with.
However, Rintoul didn’t want to jump to conclusions and was trying to figure out when the picture was taken.
Maybe it was taken several months ago? Or maybe it was taken of a club that he wasn’t even using, something like a gadget club Matsuyama liked to screw around with on the range?
Nope. Rintoul said he took a look at when the picture was posted and the date was from three days ago.
Still, Rintoul didn’t want to jump to conclusions and needed to actually take a look at the club itself to see how much of a difference the substance on the club could provide Matsuyama.
“The pictures were damning. It was almost like White-Out that you might use on paper at home. A White-Out substance that was very much upon the face of the club, which really, it’s very clear in the rules that that’s not allowed.”
Rintoul met up with Matsuyama on the fifth tee, asked him about the club, took some “very detailed” pictures of the club and felt the club head itself to see if it was “non-conforming".
Rintoul said he couldn’t tell there was a substance upon first touch of the face. But when rubbing his finger back and forth, he could feel the thickness of the substance and pretty much knew that Matsuyama was going to be disqualified and told him so.
Even then, Rintoul suggested that Matsuyama play out the front nine and that he would have a discussion with USGA Equipment Standards representatives before making a final decision.
“We wanted to give Hideki all the ‘due’ he was deserved while we ascertained whether this club was non-conforming or not,” Rintoul said.
After that, Rintoul met with the reps and they went through what is outlined in the USGA’s official rulebook regarding equipment rule 4.1.A (3) which states: A player must not make a stroke with a club whose performance characteristics he or she deliberately changed during the round.
At that point, he and the other USGA reps decided the club was non-conforming and once a club has been deemed as such, then rule 4.1.A states that the player is disqualified. They informed Matsuyama before he had a chance to begin his back nine.
“After we talked about it in the fifth fairway, I’m not going to say he was expecting it. But it probably wasn’t as much of a surprise that it would have been if it had been unknown,” Rintoul said.
Rintoul admitted that the equipment rules can get “real finicky, real quick”.
Had Matsuyama simply applied some dots with a Sharpie marker around the face of the club, which is a common practice for pretty much all golfers and allowed during competition, or even if the substance itself was inside the grooves of the club rather than the face, then that would have been okay because a Sharpie’s markings are smooth and the substance being in the grooves wouldn’t give the club any advantage to the ball. But because it was on the face, that made all the difference.
“The equipment rules are made to try to make sure that the game is played and enjoyed by everybody without people applying Chapstick on the face of their driver for extra spin. The rules are very clear about applying something that can affect the spin, how the ball flies, loft, speed. All kinds of characteristics the ball has after it hits the face. Nothing applied specifically to the face is allowed.”
The mistake wasn’t just the amount applied or that it was on the face of the club, it was the fact that it was also done to his 3-wood.
Rintoul said Matsuyama’s equipment manager, Toshi Miyano, put the substance on his driver for alignment purposes so Matsuyama would know where to line up his ball to get the best effect out of his clubs. However, Miyano thought it was okay to do it to the other clubs in the bag, just not the driver.
“He had done it to Hideki’s driver before and had been stopped. However, he thought that only applied to the driver and it applies to all your clubs.”
Ultimately, Rintoul said Matsuyama was very forthright and honest when confronted about the substance and there were no hijinks intended.
“If he had just used his driver off the first tee instead of the three-wood, he’d still be playing right now,” Rintoul said.