Padraig Harrington was the victim of some serious bad luck in 2011 when he was playing at the Abu Dhabi Championship.
Upon completion of his round he went into the clubhouse to find out he'd been disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard. He had been penalised for moving his ball less than a millimetre forward and he never noted it on his card.
What's even worse is Harrington wasn't informed that he had "cheated" by anyone, a television viewer spotted the supposed infringement and notified officials.
Thankfully four years later the powers that be at golf have seen some sense. They've acknowledged the stupidity of disqualifying someone who's unaware they've done wrong and amended the rules accordingly.
Here's the updated rule;
A player is not disqualified for returning a lower score for a hole than actually taken as a result of failing to include penalty strokes that the player did not know were incurred before returning the scorecard
Instead, the player incurs the penalty under the rule that was breached and must add an additional penalty of two strokes for the scorecard error
The updated rules comes as part of a number of proposed new golf rules set to be implemented on January 1st following the standard four year review cycle.
Watch the horrendous incident below
