“Common practice on tour” - Paul McGinley speaks out after Brooks Koepka gets cleared of potential rules violation at Masters

Brooks Koepka and his caddie Ricky Elliott landed in trouble on Day 1 of the 2023 Masters for a potential rule violation. The LIV golfer’s caddie was investigated after he allegedly broke Rule 10-2a.

However, the duo were left scot-free as the Masters committee found the accusations to be baseless. Following this, former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley came out to slam the move.

Koepka and Elliott were looked into for allegedly violating the rule on the par-5 15th hole. According to the accusations, the golfer’s caddie said "five" in the direction of Woodland’s caddie, Brennan Little, ahead of Koepka’s second shot.

Following this, McGinley came out to state that the violation was obvious. He dubbed it "staggering" that Brooks Koepka and his caddie were cleared of it. Slamming the Masters committee for it, the Irish golfer said that it was a "common practice on tour" to not take action.

Speaking on the issue, Paul McGinley, who works at Augusta National as an analyst for Golf Channel, said:

“It’s very obvious… it’s staggering that they’ve denied it because the evidence is there. This is common practice on tour. Whether you like it or not, it happens in every professional tournament around the world.”

He added:

“If the authorities want to stamp this out and really come down on this and make an example of it and obviously they haven’t. They’ve chosen not to do that and it looked very clearly the evidence was against them.”

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Brooks Koepka and caddie set free after rules violation accusations at Masters

The TV footage from Thursday’s first round showed Brooks Koepka’s caddie, Elliott, saying "five" to Woodland’s caddie. The videos soon began to circulate online, suggesting that the caddie had violated the rule.

However, the Masters Tournament Committee quickly released a statement that "there was no breach of the rules" after questioning the people involved.

The Masters Committee said in a release, as quoted by Golfweek:

“Following the completion of Brooks Koepka’s round, the committee questioned his caddie and others in the group about a possible incident on No. 15. All involved were adamant that no advice was given or requested. Consequently, the committee determined that there was no breach of the rules.”

Koepka was also quick to dismiss the incident. Backing his caddie in the issue, Koepka said that Woodland and his caddie “had no idea” that he was hitting.

Speaking in his Masters post-round press conference, Koepka said:

“Yeah, we looked at it when we got back in. GW (Gary Woodland) and Butchie (Brennan Little) had no idea what we were hitting; they didn’t even know because — I know that fact because GW asked me what we hit walking off, when we were walking down. So that’s all I can give you.”

It is pertinent to note that Brooks Koepka would’ve suffered a two-stroke penalty if the violation was proven. The golfer’s 65 from Day 1 would have been turned into a 67.