Lexi Thomspson hit with penalty after another bizarre LPGA rules snafu

Lexi Thompson can’t catch a break.

The LPGA star had another run-in with the Rules of Golf on Saturday at the LPGA’s Indy Women in Tech Championship.

Thompson hit a wild tee shot on the 10th hole that sailed all the way into the 6th fairway. Due to wet conditions, the tournament instituted a lift, clean and place rule for the event. Based on that, Thompson cleaned her ball when she found it, then dropped it within a club-length of the original position.

At this point it seemed Thompson had followed the rules perfectly. But a local rule that was distributed to players before the start of the event changed things. The rule stated that lift, clean and place only applied when a player’s ball was in the fairway… of the hole they were playing.

Since Lexi was in the wrong fairway, she was not allowed to clean her ball. Fortunately, a rules official caught Thompson’s error before she hit her shot, according to Golf Chanel’s Kay Cockerill. That prevented her from being hit with a two-shot penalty.

“Thankfully, Marty intervened before she hit her next shot,” Cockerill reported. “Otherwise, she would have been hitting from the wrong spot, and it would have been a two-shot penalty. So, in a sense, it saved her a shot.”

Thompson took the one-shot penalty in stride and somehow saved par on the hole. She would finish with an impressive 64 that moved her to 16 under, just five behind leader Lizette Salas.

Thompson is making her return to the LPGA after a brief hiatus from Tour that saw her miss the Women’s British Open to ‘to recharge [her] mental batteries.’

Thompson made news throughout the golf world for an especially notable rules violation in 2017. At the ANA Inspiration, she was hit with a four-shot penalty after a TV viewer called in a penalty. The violation likely cost Thompson a major championship victory.