Davis Riley has shown yet again that he’s an honorable steward of the game of golf. Unfortunately, the result could be getting knocked out of a PGA Tour event.
For the second time in his career, Riley called a penalty on himself in a key spot. On Saturday, it happened during the PGA Tour’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson in McKinney, Texas, when the 28-year-old realized that his distance-measuring device was set up with illegal settings.
According to a tweet from the PGA Tour communications team, Riley “was assessed a two-stroke penalty on hole No. 17 in round two of THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson for using the device with slope feature (breach of Rule 4.3). Riley self-reported the incident.”
At the time of the penalty, Riley was teetering on the projected cutline of 4 under, but was on the right side. He subsequently dropped to 3 under, however, after posting a 66 in the opening round of the event at TPC Craig Ranch.
The PGA Tour is testing the use of Distance Measuring Devices this month, among several changes that it is considering to improve pace of play.
Tour pros Sam Burns, Jhonattan Vegas, and Adam Schenk represented players in a working group charged with trying to speed up play. The Tour previously did a test in 2017 on the Korn Ferry Tour and the results didn’t indicate a significant improvement in round time. The devices, which have become ubiquitous in recreational golf for the past few decades, are already allowed on PGA Tour Americas “more out of necessity,” said Gary Young, the Tour’s vice president of rules and competition, noting that the courses played on that circuit often aren’t marked as well. But Young said the Tour will be monitoring the data to determine if the use of DMDs will make a difference on tee shots at par 3s, approach shots, and especially when players hit foul balls and can’t easily find a marker.
Riley had a similar incident at the U.S. Junior Amateur championship in 2013, when the then-16-year-old from Hattiesburg confessed to rules official Skip Giston and opponent Scottie Scheffler that his ball had rolled a bit after he addressed it while preparing to putt from just off the green on the final hole of match play.
Riley was penalized one stroke as a result. He conceded Scheffler’s short putt, putting the title of tournament champion on Scheffler by a 3 and 2 count.
Riley’s lone individual PGA Tour victory came just miles away from the site of this week’s tournament, when he captured the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. He also won the Zurich Classic in 2023 with teammate Nick Hardy.
Adam Schupak of Golfweek and Paul Skrbina of USA TODAY Sports contributed to this article.
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