Jon Rahm escapes Lexi Thompson-like penalty in Irish Open win

Jon Rahm would likely have won the Irish Open on Sunday in a walk anyway, but the Spaniard escaped at least a one-stroke penalty when he replaced his ball on the sixth green in the wrong place and got away with it.

Certainly, that’s the way Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee saw it, when he pointed a finger at Rahm for the poor placement and longtime rules official Andy McFee for botching the call in a scenario reminiscent of, but with an outcome vastly different from, Lexi Thompson’s four-stroke miscue at the ANA Inspiration.

To allow Daniel Im an unimpeded line to the cup on No. 6 at Portstewart in Northern Ireland, Rahm marked his ball to the side and moved it. After his playing partner putted, Rahm put his mark down correctly and then set his ball in front of it, a placement that seemed to get it closer to the hole. McFee spoke with Rahm and decided the golfer may have given himself a more favorable lie by “millimeters,” but that he had not intended to breach the rule:

“The integrity of the competition was certainly at risk, and the dynamic of the competition completely changed from what it should have been to one person’s interpretation, and in my opinion, a wrong interpretation of it,” Chamblee said later on Golf Channel:

“Andy McFee certainly has a great reputation administering the rules in a fair manner, but I believe he got this one wrong,”

Chamblee added. “It wasn’t millimeters. It was inches; probably two to three inches this ball was misplaced.”

Because Rahm violated the rule, in Chamblee’s view, he should have incurred a one-shot penalty and instead of playing from the sixth hole with a five-shot lead, his advantage would have been just three strokes.

“And all of a sudden, what looks to be something easy and a walk in the park becomes very stressful,” Chamblee opined. “The dynamic certainly changed there, and I don’t believe it changed for the right reason.”

Rahm, for his part, was chagrined by the situation but believes it was a big to-do about not much at all.

“It really makes me feel bad that my first win on the European Tour is always going to have that little mark on it,” he told BBC.com. “I thought I put it back exactly where it was, but they came to me and told me it was such a slight difference.”

While the rules do not make allowances for such things, Rahm said the kerfuffle was “silly” because he was putting from such a short distance.

“I mean, when we’re talking about putts that are a foot from the hole, it just seems so silly, because it’s a putt that’s going to go in a hundred times out of a hundred,” he told reporters following his victory. “I mean, Lexi was leading that major championship and I was playing the way that I was playing. It’s not like it’s a putt from six feet to win the tournament and you’re moving it three feet in front of you, right. It’s such a small difference.”

Though he came out unscathed, Rahm essentially shrugged his shoulders and chose to move on.

“I do believe that the Rules of Golf should leave a little bit to the interpretation, because it can’t be exact every single time,” he said. “Every situation is different and every moment is different, and the camera angle can always be something that might fool the eye. In my case today, I was aware of what I did, and I thought I put it back in the same spot.

“It’s just golf,” Rahm concluded.