After ascending to 490th place overall in Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Golf, I’ve plummeted precipitously over the past few weeks.

Today, however, delivered a devastating gut-shot. Stewart Cink, my last remaining semi-big-name, was DQed yesterday from the Zurich Classic of New Orleansthanks to perhaps the most idiotic USGA rule: 13-4a.

It seems Cink found his ball in the grass on the edge of a fairway bunker. He had to take his stance in the bunker to play his ball. That shot ended up in a greenside bunker.

It was then that Cink made his fatal, egregious mistake: he raked the fairway bunker.

Well, according to 13-4a, he was “testing the conditions” of the bunker way up by the green – deemed a “similar hazard” – by raking the fairway bunker.

Just to be clear, Cink’s caddie was also prohibited from raking the bunker (because the caddie is defined as a player’s “equipment"). Moreover, Cink was prohibited from raking the fairway bunker even if he could not see whether or not his ball was in a greenside trap.

So, let me get this straight. Cink was supposed to leave the trap unraked until he walked up to the greenside trap, found his ball, hit it, and raked that trap. Then before putting out, he (or his caddie) was supposed to trudge back to the fairway bunker to rake it while all the players behind him waited. Or else he was to leave his unraked footprints for some later group to deal with.

This is precisely the sort of rule that we need to speed tournament play, especially after multiple rain delays.

And it’s absolutely a killer for us Fantasy Golf geeks.

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