Martin Dempster: Rules officials got wrong culprit on last day day in Dubai

Chinas Haotong Li picked up a penalty in Dubai, while Bryson DeChambeaus slow play went unpunished. Picture: Andrew Redington/Getty

The defending champion became the first known professional to be hit by the new rules introduced at the start of the year, losing around £80,000 for a two-shot penalty after an alleged breach of Rule 10.2b (4) when his caddie was adjudged to have helped him line up a putt on the 72nd hole.

First and foremost, Li appears to have been harshly treated, hence a wave of criticism of the decision by European Tour rules officials having been whipped up on social media since Sunday evening.

Paul Lawrie branded it as an “awful decision”, Paul McGinley questioned its “pedanticness”, Eddie Pepperell said it was “shockingly bad”, David Howell labelled it as “utterly ridiculous” and Denis Pugh claimed the people who made the call “should all hold their heads in shame”.

In short, this decision has dragged golf back into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons by showing yet again that it just can’t seem to shrug off a propensity to shoot itself in the foot. Yes, the new rule specifies that from the time a player “begins to take a stance for the stroke” until the stroke is made, a caddie ‘must not deliberately stand on or close to an extension of the line of play behind the ball for any reason’.

However, you only need to look at a video clip of the incident to see that Li’s caddie had walked away before the player had taken his stance and, therefore, commonsense should have prevailed. When will people learn that really has to be applied more often in the game?

In all the years I’ve covered European Tour events, I have rarely come across a player being lined up by his caddie, which makes it so ironic that this first penalty under the new rules introduced by the R&A and USGA should occur on that circuit.

If it happened on the LPGA Tour, no-one would really have batted an eyelid, but no-one really saw it coming on the European Tour and, not surprisingly, what appears to have angered people even more is that this penalty was handed out on a day when blatant slow play was allowed in that final group.

Li himself is not exactly Speedy Gonzalez out on the fairways, having been painfully slow when wearing down Rory McIlroy in the corresponding group 12 months earlier. In fact, the Chinese player should probably have been punished then, as should the man who now has his hands on the iconic coffee pot.

Make no mistake, Bryson DeChambeau is one of the most exciting talents to grace the game for a long time. Yes, he’s a tad eccentric but golf needs different at a time when there appear to be more robots out there than ever. The problem with his scientific approach to the game, though, is that it takes too long to figure everything out for each shot.

A video posted on social media by the European Tour in the wake of his record-breaking victory in Dubai was titled, “An insight into Bryson’s process”. In that, DeChambeau can be heard talking over his second shot from the left rough at the 16th hole with his caddie and one of the things they discuss is “air density”, whatever the heck that is.

It took him at least one minute and 15 seconds to hit that particular shot when the new rules advocate that  it should not take more than  40 seconds to play.

According to Iain Carter, the BBC’s esteemed golf correspondent, DeChambeau took even longer – one minute and 45 seconds – for another shot a little earlier in the round.

Sorry Bryson, but what you are doing is gaining an unfair advantage. Some might even say it is a form of “cheating”, something that has been suggested of players who can speed up when they are on the clock but revert to a snail’s pace when the  officials leave a group.

DeChambeau reckons he buys himself time by walking quickly between shots.

That’s not the point, though. And, unless he can come up with a formula that allows him to to fathom out everything quicker and, in turn, pull the trigger quicker, he’s going to get just as many people disliking him as loving him.