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Mud Balls
Aaron Doster-Imagn Images

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Mud Balls!

Like divot holes, the curious and the most unfair part of the game of golf.

And neither are avoidable with any certainty.

On Thursday, during the first round of the PGA Championship, the age-old debate over whether to play the ball down or not was a highlight of the post-round comments from players, both successful and unsuccessful.

With roughly four inches of rain falling on Quail Hollow from last Friday to Wednesday, the course was, to a man, sloppy to play on.

But instead of using prudence, the officials of the PGA went for the jugular and left the ball down.

“I feel like the grass is so good, there is no real advantage to cleaning your ball in the fairway, the course is completely tipped out,” Defending Champion Xander Schauffele said of playing the ball down. “It sucks that your kind of 50/50 once you hit the fairway.”

Both Schauffele and Scotti Scheffler were in the middle of the fairway on the difficult par 4 16th hole, with mid-irons in their hands, and both had mud balls they couldn’t control and found the water and two double bogeys.

“I think everybody was surprised, feel like we just played two practice rounds, hitting our casual walk for two days, and then they said it was, it was just going to be playing the ball down,” Tommy Fleetwood said of the decision. “There was a few but it wasn't horrific to be fair.”

World No.1 Scheffler questioned the luck factor when the ball is played down in conditions that create abnormal mud balls.

“In golf, there's enough luck throughout a 72-hole tournament that I don't think the story should be whether or not the ball is played up or down,” Scheffler said. “When I look at golf tournaments, I want the purest, fairest test of golf, and in my opinion, maybe the ball today should have been played up.”

Clearly, with over 45 players shooting under par, the mud ball issue was not as critical, but Friday may be more acute.

“The mud balls are going to get worse; they're going to get worse as the plays dries up,” Schauffele said. “They're going to get in that perfect cake zone, to where it's kind of muddy underneath, and then picking up mud on the way through. I mean, you just keep -- I don't know, maybe it hit it a little bit lower off the tee, but then unfortunately the problem with hitting it low off the tee is the ball doesn't carry or roll anywhere, so then you sacrifice distance. It's a bit of a crapshoot.”

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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