There was a weird moment in the climactic moments of the John Deere Classic Sunday evening.
Perhaps it caught your ear on the CBS telecast after Emiliano Grillo, on the first playoff hole, drove his ball into the right rough. After Grillo had arrived at his ball, CBS broadcast an image of Grillo sticking a tee in the ground next to his ball and picking the ball up.
“Now, Colt, what’s going on with Grillo’s ball?” CBS announcer Andrew Catalon asked on-course reporter Colt Knost.
To which Knost said, “The marshal decided to pick it up, so [Grillo] had to go back and put in the closest possible spot.”
If your reaction was anything like that of many observers on social media, you were thinking, Say what?! Why would a trained PGA Tour marshal pick up a ball in such a crucial moment?
Well, turns out a marshal didn’t. Here’s what actually went down.
If you missed the exciting finish to the Deere, Grillo and Brian Campbell met in a sudden-death playoff after finishing regulation tied at 18 under. The first playoff hole was the par-4 18th, where Campbell, hitting first, laced a drive down the right-center of the fairway. Grillo followed with a tee shot that was about 20 yards longer than Campbell’s but right of the fairway and into a cluster of fans.
When the players arrived at their balls, Campbell didn’t waste much time. From 193 yards, he hit a flighted iron to 16 feet from the hole. Grillo’s second shot, though shorter, wasn’t quite so straightforward. He had trees just to the right of his line and also was dealing with an odd ruling. At some point after Grillo’s ball had settled in the rough, someone — seemingly a marshal, as reported by Knost — had picked up the ball and moved it.
Fans at Tour events will occasionally pick up a ball before sheepishly dropping it after realizing the error of their ways, but a marshal doing so in such a consequential moment seemed implausible.
It made sense, then, to learn it wasn’t a marshal after all.
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On Monday morning, a PGA Tour media official told GOLF.com that a marshal was not at fault — in fact, a young fan had scooped up the ball before putting it back down.
Grillo then made a small goof of his own.
Under Rule 9.6, a ball moved by an outside influence must be replaced without penalty on the spot from where it was moved. Instead of placing his ball, Grillo dropped it. No harm, no foul, though. “He corrected that,” the official said, “and placed it on the estimated spot it was moved from.”
After Grillo’s ball was officially back in play, he was left with what looked to be a clean lie. But from 169 yards out, he couldn’t match Campbell’s shotmaking, instead airmailing his approach over the green and leaving himself a tricky chip back up the slope from just more than 60 feet. When Grillo failed to get up and down from there, Campbell had two putts for his second Tour title.
After his round, Grillo wasn’t asked about the fan interference.
“It is what it is,” he said of losing in the playoff. “I got myself there. I gave myself a chance.”
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