Reed On The Greens October 6, 2024
by Jeffrey Reed, Editor, LondonOntarioGolf.com
Photos: Jeffrey Reed

Strathroy District Collegiate Institute’s Ben Hudson could have been competing at the OFSAA Boy’s Golf Championship Oct. 16-17 at Hollinger Golf club in Timmins.

Instead, he’s watching from the sidelines – but with his head held high.

Hudson, 17, a Grade 12 student at SDCI called a disqualification upon himself at the WOSSAA Boys Golf Championship on Sept. 30 at St. Thomas Golf and Country Club. He was leading the field at 2-under-par with four holes to go, but finished with an 82 (+12) which was erased after the DQ.

Here’s how it played out at Union.

At St. Thomas G&CC’s hole No. 15 – a 556-yard par-5 – Hudson, of Ailsa Craig, hit his ball into the right rough. He was playing a Titleist TruFeel marked with a 2 and a black dot marked above the number. He found a Titleist TruFeel in the rough, deeply buried with the number (and any personal marking, like his black dot) not visible.

Ben Hudson. Photo: Jeffrey Reed/LondonOntarioGolf.com.

“It was a TruFeel, and it was exactly where my tee shot landed. What are the odds it’s not my ball? I played the ball for the rest of the hole, and carded a bogey-six,” Hudson explained.

In fact, Hudson said prior to teeing off at No. 15, he had noticed that the black dot was fading on his ball in play, and that he would have to re-mark his ball, or switch to a new ball with a fresh black dot. But he said, he forgot to do either of those two things.

Once Hudson holed out at No. 15, he realized, lifting and looking at the ball, that the ball he had played was not his; it was, in fact, a Titleist TruFeel with a number 3 marking, not a 2, and without a black dot above the number. “I never play the number 3 – I hate the number. I feel it’s bad luck,” said Hudson.

Hudson then went back to the spot where he hit his shot out of the rough, and just 10 feet away found his original ball. Visibly shaken, he went in at 9, 7, 7 (+12 over the final three holes) and carded an 82.

“I knew it was a DQ,” Hudson said, “and it got me rattled. I was shaking, and afraid I would get DQ’d. This had never happened to me before.”

Meeting with tournament organizers post-round, Hudson recounted the series of events and was disqualified. He said, “Whether or not I was playing good golf, it’s not fair for everyone else if I were to get that gold medal around my neck after the round.”

Hudson was the favourite going into the tournament. Consider his 2024 season.

On the Junior Tyson Tour, Hudson only appeared in three tournaments, but he captured the July 22 season opener at Highland Country Club with a round of 4-under 67, and the two-day Les Thomas Memorial Tournament with a final-round 5-under 65 at Fanshawe Golf Club. Hudson finished T2 at the Les Thomas opener at Thames Valley Golf Club. Unfortunately, he did not play enough events to qualify for the season-ending Sunningdale Golf and Country Club Tour Championship invitational.

At the Ontario Summer Games on Aug. 4 at FireRock Golf Club, Hudson won U19 Boys silver, as did the Hudson-led Tyson Tour team entry who included SDCI teammate Hunter Talbot, WOSSAA T5 finisher Zander Battaglia of Parkside Collegiate Institute in St. Thomas, and Will McEachern of Glencoe District High School who finished T15 at WOSSAA.

Ben Hudson with Fanshawe GC head pro Rob Vincent after capturing Tyson Tour’s Les Thomas tournament. Photo: Jeffrey Reed/LondonOntarioGolf.com.

Then on Sept. 8 at FireRock GC, Hudson finished with rounds of 72-76–148 (+4) to beat runner-up Tristan Zhang by six shots to claim the Maple Leaf Junior Golf Tour’s final regular-season stop. That win qualified him for the Maple Leaf tour’s 2025 Champion of Champions World Championship in the Boys 15-18 division. The event is slated for July 29-31, 2025 at Lough Erne Resort in Ireland and involves 250 golfers from more than 40 countries.

And at the Tri-County Boys high school championship Sept. 23 at St. Thomas G&CC, Hudson fired a 3-under 69 to repeat as A-Flight champion and help his SDCI squad win the team title. The Saints, including Talbot and Logan Woodiwiss, shot a three-player combined score of 228, five shots better than Parkside.

At WOSSAA, Talbot finished T8, Woodiwiss 14th and teammate Dominic Nagy T34. Even if Hudson had finished first or near the top, SDCI would not have placed a team at OFSAA. Hudson, however, could have been individual-bound to Timmins. Rylan Hall of Stratford’s St. Michael Catholic Secondary School finished 74 (+2) and captured individual honours, while Battaglia earned a trip to Timmins with a High School division individual score of 6-over 78.

Odds are, Hudson would have captured the tournament. Instead, he did a most admirable thing in calling a penalty upon himself – a penalty which disqualified him from the tourney.

Looking back, Hudson could have marked the ball he originally found in the rough with a tee, lifted it and examined it – he would have discovered that this was not his ball. He could have then continued searching for his ball and, with it just 10 feet away, perhaps it would have been found. He also could have played a second ball back on the tee.

The USGA says: “If a ball might be yours but you cannot identify it as it lies, you may lift the ball to identify it. But the spot of the ball must first be marked, and the ball must not be cleaned more than needed to identify it (except on the putting green).”

According to the R&A: “The stroke made with the wrong ball and any more strokes before the mistake is corrected do not count. If you do not correct the mistake before making a stroke to begin another hole or, for the final hole of the round, before returning your scorecard, you are disqualified.”

There are no rules officials on course during high school play – only teachers volunteering their time to “score for the group and supervise with regard to safety, behaviour, etc. but not to act as rules officials,” explained Medway High School teacher Ryan Matches, convenor of WOSSAA Girls, TVRA Central Boys and TVRA Central Girls golf championships.

Matches said coaches are told prior to each round that players are to have a second ball ready to play, if needed, because of incidents like Hudson’s.

“I’m sure this is a learning experience for (Hudson) but what he did (disqualifying himself) speaks volumes about the type of person he is, and he should be proud of that.”

Ben Hudson with Highland CC head pro Rick Pero after winning Tyson Tour 2024 opener. Photo: Jeffrey Reed/LondonOntarioGolf.com.

Hudson’s call did not go unnoticed by his teammates, nor the competitors who found out about the DQ, according to SDCI teammate Talbot.

“Not everyone would have done what Ben did,” said Talbot. “That was pretty special.”

I’ve gotten to know Hudson very well this summer as I covered numerous junior golf events across Southwestern Ontario. Here’s a kid who only began golfing in 2020 when the pandemic shut down almost every other activity. Working under coach Mitch Sutton at The Oaks Golf Club, Hudson works tirelessly on his game – it’s a work ethic he learned from his father, Jeremy, a former standout infielder with the London Majors of the Intercounty Baseball League.

I’ve been in awe of Ben’s golf game this summer. But now I am even more proud of what he has done at WOSSAA.

On the 11th hole of the 1925 U.S. Open, the great Bobby Jones touched the grass behind his ball with his club, causing it to move. No one noticed, but Jones called a penalty on himself, thus losing the tournament. Congratulated for it later, Jones is said to have replied, “You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.”

Jones said he didn’t know how else to play the game, other than to be honest.

Young Ben Hudson will remember this time in his golf career. And he should be proud of it for the rest of his life.

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Jeffrey Reed has covered golf for a local and Canadian audience since 1980. He’s a three-time writing award winner from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada, and a three-time author. Reach him at jeff@londonontariogolf.com.