If you’ve been on the moon since then, what happened on Friday afternoon slash Saturday morning is sure to be discussed to death in country club grill rooms for years to come. In brief, Tiger hit a perfect wedge shot to the green at no. 15 during Friday’s second round – so perfect, in fact, that it caromed off the flagstick and into the water hazard. Clearly flustered, Tiger weighed his drop options and, as he would later state in a post-round interview, dropped a ball two yards behind where he’d previously hit from so that he could take the same swing he’d just taken and not hit the flagstick again.

I was watching this on my couch and suspected he’d done something wrong, but I didn’t call in to that invisible guy you call to report rules violations. But someone did, and the Masters rules committee was made aware of the situation as Tiger played the 18th hole. The problem: under the drop rule under which he ostensibly proceeded, Tiger was required by rule to drop his ball as nearly as possible to the spot from where he last hit on pain of a two-stroke penalty. As ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski detailed (more), the committee decided before Tiger signed his scorecard that he had done nothing wrong. Amazingly, no one bothered to discuss the issue with Tiger after he completed his round or before he signed his scorecard. So Tiger signed his scorecard and gave the aforementioned, televised post-round interview where he admitted to dropping the ball two yards back of where he took his previous shot.

Tiger blew it — in more ways than one.

Woops.

According to Wojciechowski, Masters rules committee chairman Fred Ridley was made aware of what Tiger said in his interview at 10 pm on Friday night. Faced now with what amounted to new evidence – Tiger’s unwitting admission – the committee reconsidered its previous decision and determined that it had gotten it wrong. Tiger’s drop was illegal after all. Tiger should have been assessed a two-stroke penalty — but he wasn’t. Technically, therefore, he signed an incorrect scorecard, a big-time no-no in the world of golf.

So here’s my take. First, Tiger’s drop was clearly illegal. Given the relief option he chose, Tiger was required by rule to take his drop as near as possible to the spot he took his last stroke from. Two yards back from that spot is clearly not that. Tiger, therefore, should have signed for an 8 on his scorecard instead of a 6. On this there is no debate.

Second, given its handling of the situation, the rules committee at least arguably made the correct call by assessing Tiger a two-stroke penalty rather than outright DQing him. Under rule 33-7, the competition committee “may in exceptional cases” waive the disqualification penalty. What made Friday’s case “exceptional” wasn’t the fact that it involved Tiger Woods or that it was The Masters – the rules committee wouldn’t soil the integrity of its much-revered competition with reasoning like that. Nor was it the fact that Tiger didn’t know he took an illegal drop when he took it: there is a specific Rules Decision (33-7/4.5) that says “ignorance of the rules or facts that the player could have discovered prior to signing his scorecard” are not sufficient reasons to waive to the disqualification penalty. What made this case “exceptional” was the rules committee’s botching of it — twice. First, it incorrectly concluded while Tiger was still playing that his drop was fine when it obviously wasn’t. (I wonder if the committee would have exonerated a certain fourteen-year old Chinese amateur with such alacrity.) Second, it didn’t take the very easy step of addressing the situation with Tiger before he signed his scorecard – an inexplicable error if ever there was one. The committee could have prevented Tiger from signing an incorrect scorecard, as the PGA did with Dustin Johnson after he brushed sand in a bunker on the 72nd hole at the 2010 PGA Championship. It just didn’t. The committee concluded, therefore, that it would have been, in Ridley’s words, “grossly unfair” to Tiger to disqualify him based on what he said in his interview when it could have prevented him from signing an incorrect scorecard.

This point is a lot closer than Ridley made it sound. Tiger’s exoneration happened without his knowledge, so effectively retracting that decision through disqualification doesn’t seem terribly unfair. Had Tiger relied on a ruling made by a rules official that turned out to be wrong, then “grossly unfair” would be an appropriate description. But that didn’t happen. The stronger argument is that it would be grossly unfair to use Tiger’s post-round interview against him but, from what I’ve read so far, that is not the argument the committee made.

Third, this situation will not mark the end of the “trial by TV viewer” era, as many players and commentators suggested yesterday. Cases where rules committees and players do not know about alleged rules infractions until after the player signed his scorecard will not be affected by this case, which PGA Tour player Aaron Oberholser curiously likened to “Supreme Court precedent.” Those cases will be unaffected because there will not be an intervening cause – a committee botch job – that would make disqualification “grossly unfair.” Ignorance of the rules or facts that the player could have discovered prior to signing his scorecard” remain an insufficient reason to waive the DQ penalty – by rule. Players will still get disqualified from time to time based on the minutest of infractions caught by guys on their couches with nothing better to do. Now, however, people will complain (wrongly) that there are two sets of rules – Tiger’s and everyone else’s.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Tiger should have withdrawn. It is incumbent upon players to follow the rules. If a player does not know them, it is incumbent upon him to call in a rules official. In this case, Tiger was dealing with a rule with which most mid-handicappers are familiar – how and where to drop a ball after you’ve drenched one. He just botched it. If he had any uncertainty he could have called for a rules official: he didn’t do that, either. In the end, he never played a ball from where the rules required him to play it – a spot he intentionally avoided lest he hit the flagstick again. Whether he would have hit the flagstick again, or come up short with an incrementally softer swing – neither we nor any of his competitors will ever know. What we do know is that Tiger did not play the 15th hole by the rules of golf like the rest of the field did. And while it arguably would have been unfair to Tiger to be DQ’ed after the committee exonerated him without his knowledge, the flipside is also true: it is unfair to the other players for Tiger to remain in the field just because the committee could have saved him but didn’t. And inasmuch as most of those other players wouldn’t have been on TV, they would not have been entitled to the benefit of the committee blowing a ruling if they had been accused of a wrong drop by, say, an on-course fan. Tiger’s acceptance of the committee’s gesture, therefore, was not the honorable thing to do in this most honorable of games.

Then again, this is a guy who cheated on his wife with every Waffle House waitress from here to Tallahassee, who cusses like a sailor at the slightest mishit, who throws clubs in front of kids and who, as a 22-year old, refused to autograph a golf ball to help his colleagues Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade raise money for charity.

Honor is the furthest thing from this guy’s mind.

Two of these four combos will see a golf course.

Like the ones I did in ’11 (yes, that’s “ones,” plural), this script wasn’t without thought. The Thursday pants haven’t gotten the call since George W. Bush was president: if they didn’t get the nod for a pro-am on Masters Thursday I’d have to put them in the donation pile — and I sure can’t do that.

Friday’s shirt is from Bo van Pelt’s Alial Fital script. If I could design an AF shirt this would be it. (Buy now.)

Saturday’s hot pink pants are a new purchase from Bonobos. Seemed a smart call for Saturday’s Spring Kickoff at Sand Point CC, although it is supposed to rain.

Sunday’s green pants — well, ya gotta wear green on Masters Sunday, and those are the only green pants I own. (This particular combo looks a bit like Luke Donald’s Friday garb.)

As it turns out I’m not the only guy in the world not playing in The Masters who nevertheless does a script for it. Tim “Lumpy” Herron just released his — couch potato chic.

Good stuff. But I like mine better.

UPDATE: Golf Magazine voted Bo Van Pelt the best dressed player at the 2013 Masters. (More.) The shirt he was wearing in their favorite shirt? The blue one with the contrasting green color shown above.

My favorite Mets!

The game lasted two innings. No score kept — for that, I think I’m glad. The other team had a few players who had to have been walking when Finn was born.

Reese (standing on first base) had her first-ever base hit in the first inning.

Their next game is on Saturday. Can’t wait.

Reese played pitcher in the first inning.

The bowling wasn’t pretty, but the gals had a lot of fun.

A few pics:

Me and my favorite bowler.

The girls.

The girls with the guys who paid $40/hour to bowl.

Then it was soccer in the gym.

Not the Huskies star — yet.

Reese and Georgia.

Now it’s soccer outdoors. Under threatening gray skies.

Year 2 of Reese’s tenure on the Huskies is officially underway.

She’s still no Mia Hamm, but I think she touched the ball more today than she did all last year combined.

The Laurelhurst Huskies.

So it is with pleasure that I write today about a company that recently caught my eye. The company is called The Cordial Churchman, and they make bow ties.

Lots of them.

For fellas.

For their sons.

For weddings.

For church.

You get the idea.

The product I like most on TCC isn’t a product so much as a service. For $29 you can send a necktie to the five-person, South Carolina-based company and they’ll convert it into a bow tie. (Buy now I More.) Last month I sent them two neckties that were unlikely to ever again get the call. They sent me back two bow ties and voila:

TCC converted two of my old neckties into bow ties, worn here by Reese and me.

As neckties they sat at the end of the bench. As bow ties they’re in the starting lineup – and they got the call for Easter!

What I like most about TCC, however, transcends their product and service offering. The TCC folks just look like good people. And the fact that the company’s patriarch, a preacher, wears a bow tie every day is just plain cool. I don’t mind saying that I wish I could do that, but it just wouldn’t fly here in the uber-casual Pacific Northwest.

Regardless, this is a company I take pleasure doing business with. I’ll be adding to my bow tie collection in the weeks and months ahead.

Now, if only I could figure out a way to make a bow tie look good with a golf polo …