Tuesday night featured a TGL double-header, with two-time major champion Xander Schauffele’s New York Golf Club playing both matches. But the strangest incident came from the first match, when Schauffele was officially awarded a mulligan.
In a critical moment in the match, a bizarre situation and a rare ruling led to the mulligan. The good news for Schauffele was that the mulligan gave him a chance to replay a horrible bunker shot. The bad news is that his mulligan went horribly wrong, too, and may have cost his team the match.
Here’s what you should know.
Xander Schauffele squanders rare TGL mulligan opportunity
In the first TGL match on Tuesday night, Schauffele’s New York team faced off against the Bay Golf Club. The Bay Golf Club got off to a hot start, winning the first three holes.
But New York fought back and tied up the score 3-3 at the 11th hole.
When the match reached 13, Schauffele went up against Ludvig Aberg in singles. Schauffele’s tee shot ended up in a right greenside bunker, which is where things started going sideways fast.
As Schauffele set up to hit his bunker shot, Bay Golf Club’s Wyndham Clark decided to throw down the Hammer. If New York accepted the Hammer, the hole would be worth two points. If they rejected it, they’d have to forfeit the hole and give Bay Golf one point.
With Aberg sitting pretty on the green, Schauffele’s teammates declined the Hammer. But it was too late. Schauffele went ahead and hit his bunker shot, and it didn’t go well at all. His ball failed to escape the sand.
That’s when a rules official intervened to give Schauffele a redo.
After video review, the official determined that Schauffele had already addressed his ball when the Hammer was thrown. Teams are not allowed to use the Hammer once an opponent has set up to the ball.
So the official ruled that the Hammer would be wiped out (as well as New York’s decision to decline it). Instead of forfeiting the hole, Schauffele would get a mulligan on his bunker shot.
But Schauffele failed to escape the bunker again with his second attempt. The end result? New York forfeited the hole anyway.
“Yeah, it netted out terrible for us. We were going to decline it anyways, and then I hit such a bad shot, they didn’t even have an opportunity to throw a hammer, so it actually worked out worse,” Schauffele explained after the round. “Maybe if I hit it a third time, it would be better.”
In his own post-match press conference, Clark put the blame on the ref.
“So Derek [Stafford], our ref, he normally puts his hand out, like there’s a signal he does, and you can’t throw it anymore. I look at him, and he hadn’t done it, and he kind of nodded saying you could do it. Granted, Xander was standing over the ball. I could see why they called it that way, but at the same time, the ref that was there gave us the okay,” Clark argued. “It could have been really controversial.”
Stafford, the referee in question, used to officiate NBA games. Clark’s teammate Shane Lowry suggested that had he made that mistake in an NBA game, it would have worked out very differently.
“If he made that call in his NBA days, I’m not sure the players would have been as nice,” Lowry said. He continued. “If we had have tied the hole, I would have been…” before Clark cut him off to complete his thought.
“I would have been pissed,” Clark said. “Or even if we lost it. Oh, my gosh, we might have gotten thrown out for charging.”
Of course, Bay Golf Club did win the hole despite the mulligan ruling. Better yet, they went on to defeat New York 5-3.
Unfortunately for New York, the second match was not kind to them either. They took a 9-2 whooping at the hands of Keegan Bradley’s Boston Golf Club to conclude the night’s entertainment.