No place for Carlota Ciganda's shocking insult to rules officials over slow play call

Carlota Ciganda lines up a putt in the DIO Implant LA Open at Palos Verdes Golf Club earlier this year. Picture: Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images.

It’s maybe just as well Carlota Ciganda isn’t in the field for this week’s Freed Group Women’s Scottish Open because the Spaniard probably wouldn’t have been warmly welcomed on this occasion by the most knowledgeable fans in golf after her shenanigans last week.

Playing in the Amundi Evian Championship, Ciganda was disqualified after failing to accept a two-shot penalty for slow-play breaches in the second round of the penultimate women’s major of the season in France.

According to an LPGA statement, Ciganda’s group, which included Anna Nordqvist and Celine Herbin, received a warning that they were out of position on the seventh hole - their 16th of the day. Still out of position after the conclusion of the hole, the group was timed starting on the eighth hole. On the ninth hole, LPGA officials said that Ciganda’s shot times prompted a penalty for slow play.

The 33-year-old appealed the decision and clearly didn’t take kindly to that being refused. In signing for a 72 instead of a 74, she was duly disqualified, which was an embarrassment in itself but she then made matters worse by trying to defend herself.

In a post on Instagram, Ciganda wrote: “I got a few messages about the DQ from yesterday. I want to be very clear and the reason I did not sign a 7 on the last hole is because I don’t think I took 52 seconds like the Rules Official said. I had a 10 footer on the last hole, last putt and the group behind they were not even on the tee on a par 5.

“Very poor performance from the LPGA rules official, they don’t understand what professional golf is about, they only look at their stopwatch like if 20 seconds is going to make a difference. I had family and friends watching and they all said it was impossible I took that long to hit that putt! Yesterday was tough out there with windy conditions and difficult pins and I wish everyone gets treated the same and they don’t pick on the same players all the time! That’s all!”

Ciganda, of course, is a notorious slow coach, having been one of the main culprits when pace of play was shocking - US captain Juli Inkster hit the nail on the head as she described it as "painfully slow” - on the opening day of the 2019 Solheim Cup at Gleneagles. It was one of the Americans, Lizette Salas, who was hit with a “bad time” in that event, but Ciganda’s reference to the same players being picked on stems from the fact she’d already been punished playing on the LPGA.

In the 2021 Bank of Hope LPGA Match Play event in Las Vegas, the two-time tour winner initially thought she’d won the 18th hole with a birdie in a match against Sarah Schmelzel only to then be notified of a bad time, the penalty for which meant she lost both the hole and the match.

It’s annoying in itself that Ciganda clearly hasn’t learned anything from that sore episode, but to say that a rules official “doesn’t understand what professional golf is about” is one of the most shocking insults I’ve witnessed in my time covering this great game.

Golf in general at the top level but the women’s game in particular has been blighted by a pace of play issue for too long now. “When I came out on tour, I would say there were a handful of slow players and now there's a handful of fast players,” said Stacy Lewis, the current US Solheim Cup captain, in one of her chats on the subject with Scottish golf scribes in recent years.

Ciganda’s absence from this week’s $2 million LPGA/LET co-sanctioned event means an awkward situation will be avoided at Dundonald Links, but just think about what she’s done in terms of a relationship with rules officials going forward, starting in next week’s AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath and The R&A like to be proactive in the war against slow play.

“I don’t know the exact details,” said Gemma Dryburgh, Scotland’s top-ranked female professional, of the Ciganda situation that has certainly set tongues wagging in the game, “but I do think that generally we need to play faster. It’s sometimes a bit ridiculous how long rounds do take, so I think it is good the LPGA are sticking to the rules and not just penalising the smaller players, so to speak. Not that you want to hit down on all the top players, but they need to be held accountable just as much as anyone else. You don’t like to see that happen, but players need to be held accountable.

“I’m on the LPGA Board now and it is something we talk about a lot even in our meetings. Pace of play is important and that’s also the case for people watching as you want people to be entertained and not have them waiting ages for us to play. It’s in our best interest to play a bit faster.”

She’s correct, of course, as the next two weeks are fabulous opportunities to showcase the women’s game to youngsters in particular and you only need to recall Louise Duncan’s performance as an amateur in the AIG Women’s Open at Carnoustie two years ago as evidence of how inspirational these events can be.

Let’s have more of that, please – Duncan, incidentally, has secured an invitation for the Women’s Scottish Open along with fellow home player Heather MacRae from long-term tournament partner VisitScotland – and cut out the petulance if you are pulled up for breaking the rules.