Senior golfer made unconventional history
Lee Ann Walker finally got her name in the books but not in a positive way. Walker, 47, while playing golf at the Pete Dye Course in a senior LPGA tournament, got penalized 58 times. This makes her one of the most penalized golfers in history. In her defense, she has not played in a tournament since 2011. She heard about the new rules but did not feel the need to completely read them.
“I wasn’t mad; I wasn’t upset; I was just like, that’s going to add a ton to my scores,” Walker said to ESPN.com.
“That would be a funny thing to tell your kids one day ( about having one of the most penalties in history),” Sam H. ‘20 said.
Walker was penalized because her caddie lined her up on each shot, making this a two stroke penalty each time. With no one telling her, the strokes started to add up. By the time they got done counting her score, it had almost doubled.
After the rules officials broke the news to her, the next day she went one over par through 13 holes. She almost could have won if not having all those penalty strokes.
“Starting off the season, the first thing we did as a team was go over the new rules; it is important to know all the rules of golf just in case something happens,” Lauren M. ‘20 said.
Camryn Draper • Dec 11, 2019 at 2:19 pm
I would have liked this article more if the penalties were explained. I was interested to read this article because the title caught my attention, but I didn’t really understand the penalties. I am not a golf person myself, so a two stroke penalty and the strokes adding up didn’t make sense to me. Even though I didn’t thoroughly understand the context of the article, I still thought it was interesting.