Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington was disqualified from the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship on Friday after the Irishman was judged to have illegally moved his ball during Thursday’s first round.
Harrington was called in before the second round to review video replays of the incident, and accepted his disqualification after acknowledging that his ball moved as he was picking up his marker on the seventh green.
“It looks like it’s moved,” Harrington said. “So I think it’s fair enough that the penalty is there on the face of it.”
Under European Tour rules, the ball must be replaced if the coin causes it to move. A failure to do so results in a two-stroke penalty and Harrington was disqualified for signing the wrong score after putting down a 3 on the seventh hole. He finished with a 7-under 65 to sit one shot behind leader Charl Schwartzel of South Africa.
The Irishman said he clearly remembered the incident and that he knew he had touched the ball when picking up his coin. However, he said that “at that moment I established that the ball hadn’t moved” and therefore didn’t call over the referee.
But tournament organisers said a television viewer e-mailed European Tour officials to point out that the ball had moved from its original decision. After reviewing slow-motion replays of the footage, Harrington said he was forced to agree.
“This morning I came in and watched it on the TV,” he said. “I think with an unbiased view of it, I would comfortably say 99 per cent, the ball moved three dimples forward and moved back a dimple, a dimple and a half.”
European Tour referee John McFee said he was confident Harrington didn’t deliberately cheat, but that “the fact that Padraig was totally unaware that this ball has moved doesn’t unfortunately help him.”
Harrington said that, in hindsight, he should have called over the referee for a ruling.
“I was well aware of the fact that I touched it,” he said. “So I checked that the Titleist logo to align the ball was still in the same position pointing toward the target and was quite comfortable that the ball had not moved. I’m well aware of the ruling on that situation, and it’s happened many times over the years. And you know, I’m quite comfortable, if you touch a ball and it doesn’t move and you feel it hasn’t moved, it hasn’t moved, and you don’t need to replace it.”
