Every golf fan has yelled at the TV at least once. But in 1991, a fan did more than yell at his TV. He picked up the phone in Colorado and knocked Paul Azinger, a seven-time PGA Tour winner, out of the Doral Ryder Open in Miami.

Paul Azinger had just signed for a 65 on Friday in Miami. He sat one stroke off the lead, and the weekend looked wide open. That was until an official pulled him aside and told him the tournament was over for him.

“I think the decision was correct. It’s just hard to swallow,” he said when he watched the recording himself.

The line explains the strange part of the story. Azinger had not tried to bend any rules. He did not even know he had broken one until he saw the replay. What led to such a development? Well, to understand that, we need to go back to the tournament on March 1, 1991.

A Kick on the 18th Hole

Azinger had arrived at Doral in good form. On February 3, 1991, less than a month earlier, he had won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am by four strokes at 14 under. It was his seventh PGA Tour title and his first win of the new season.

Moreover, he knew the Blue Monster well. The year before, in 1990, he had been in a four-way playoff at the same event. He lost only when Greg Norman made an eagle on the first extra hole.

So, coming into the championship that year, expectations were high. He was already in form and back at a course where he had come close to winning. A good week looked very likely.

But his troubles began a day earlier, on Thursday, February 28, at the 18th hole of the Blue Monster course at Doral. Azinger’s drive found the edge of the lake, and his ball sat partly underwater, as reported by UPI.

He stepped into the water with his right foot while his left foot rested against the rocks. As he set up his position, his left foot pushed a stone out of the way. It might seem like a small detail, but the Associated Press reported that he pawed at the ground twice, moving pieces of coral. Unaware of the implications, Azinger blasted the ball out and saved par. The round aired on the USA Cable Network, and nobody at Doral thought twice about it. If anything, the shot was impressive.

That said, a TV viewer in Colorado spotted the movement of the stones and notified tournament officials after the first round had ended.

Notably, nobody on the course had seen the movement of the stones, neither his playing partners nor any Tour official, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times archive. But upon receiving the complaint, officials had to review the footage.

Tournament director Mike Shea reviewed the tape and had to agree with the caller. The next day, Azinger played his entire second round on Friday, March 1, 1991, without knowing about the developments from the previous day. An official pulled him aside after his round to inform him of the disqualification.

Why a Stone Meant Disqualification?

So why did moving the stone mean disqualification? The rule itself was simple. Rule 13-4 stated that a player could not move a loose impediment, such as a stone, while his ball lay in a hazard. The penalty was two strokes. That alone would have hurt, but it would not have ended his week.

The real trouble was the scorecard. Every player signs his card at the end of a round to confirm that it is correct, and Azinger had signed his without those two extra strokes being counted. That meant he had returned an incorrect scorecard, which fell under Rule 6-6d and resulted in disqualification.

Tournament director Mike Shea said the outcome would have been different if Azinger had known about the penalty before signing. He could have added the two strokes and stayed in the tournament.

But Shea also said the Tour did not enjoy disqualifying anyone and “was not on a witch hunt.” He felt it had to act when the rights of the entire field were involved. As for the caller, Shea said the man had given his name, but he could not remember it.

As for Azinger, he had shot a 65 that Friday and moved within one stroke of the lead. When he watched the tape himself, he could not argue with the ruling.

“I was just trying to assume a stance,” Azinger said. “It’s kind of hard to be disqualified for something that had zero impact on my score. But the rules are cut and dried.”

The Discussion It Started

The ruling, however, did spark a debate. Many players were uneasy about the violation being brought to light this way. Mark Calcavecchia, for instance, put it bluntly:

“In this situation, he got disqualified because he was on TV.”

And this point had merit. Without that one phone call, the movement of the stone might have gone unnoticed; Azinger was ten under through 36 holes at the time.

Moreover, it was not the first case of its kind. In 1987, Craig Stadler was disqualified at San Diego after viewers called in to report that he had knelt on a towel to play a shot. He would have finished second and earned $37,000 had he not been disqualified.

As for Azinger, then 31, he was less calm about the situation in later interviews. Days after the disqualification, he told Sports Illustrated what he thought the Tour should have done. He argued that the Tour should protect its players and should not let a 36-handicap golfer phone in and knock out a man who was trying to win. That statement reflected a golfer’s frustration, though nobody knew who the caller actually was.

A few days later, Azinger also shared that people at a bar had shouted warnings about pebbles at him, but he rarely found the situation funny.

“It really didn’t strike my funny bone,” he told the New Zealand Herald.

The incident pushed the Tour to come up with a solution quickly. Commissioner Deane Beman ordered rules officials into TV trucks during broadcasts. By May 1991, the Tour had created an instant-replay official’s position in a hurried decision. The idea was simple: review a player’s shot and catch any potential rules violations. It was certainly better to give a player a two-shot penalty than to disqualify him later.

Beman acknowledged that using replays to enforce the rules was new territory for the Tour. However, the experiment did not last. About two months later, an official watching the video questioned a drop by Tom Kite at the GTE Byron Nelson Classic, and the Tour used a replay to overrule him. Kite and other players complained, and the practice was abandoned within the month, as reported by Golf Digest.

Since then, the governing bodies have continued to refine the rules and their enforcement. In April 2011, the R&A and USGA introduced changes that removed disqualification in certain cases where a player could not reasonably have known about a breach.

Looking back, the Azinger case cannot be reduced to a simple question of right or wrong. The rule was clear, and Azinger himself accepted that. The Tour had a responsibility to protect the field, but critics also had a point: a phone call from a viewer ultimately decided a player’s fate when nobody on the course had noticed the breach.

What do you think? Was the Tour right to disqualify Azinger, or should it have found a better way to handle the situation?