Simon Kennedy acknowledges that his son is struggling. No one disputes this. The smoking gun was here on the 11th green on the Hills course at Infinitum resort in Spain, about 60 miles up the coast from Barcelona: damaged turf caused by the putter head of Simon’s 21-year-old tour-pro son Frank. The torn patch has since been repaired, but if you know where to look, you can still make out the byproduct of a golfer behaving badly.
U the incident happened on mondayin the fourth round of the DP World Tour’s Qualifying School six-round final. Frank Kennedy, who was born in England but grew up in the golf hotbed of Jupiter, Fla., entered the par-5 11th hole at 12 under for the tournament and in excellent position to make the 72-hole cut in a marathon event that reduced 156 hopefuls to 15 DPWT cards. Kennedy hit the 11th green in regulation, missed what felt like a makeable birdie putt and holed out. While walking off the green, he did what many golfers do when they hit the steam: He pulled his putter like a polo stick, with the intention, he said, of swinging the club through the air.
One problem: Kennedy misjudged the arc of the putter, he said, and instead of hitting it through the gap, the club went off the green — which ultimately resulted in DPWT officials disqualified Kennedy for a violation of the Code of Conduct. The extent of the damage from Kennedy’s actions is unclear. Monday Q Info’s Ryan French, what broke the storyreported that multiple sources told him that Kennedy “took a ‘divot’ off the 11th green. One player described it as a ‘one-foot divot’ about 4 feet behind the hole.”
Kennedy, in a Monday’s statementsaid the damage was “accidental.” On Tuesday, he published another statement in which he characterized the maru as a “4-inch meal” and said “this will be my final statement on the matter.”
Frank’s father, however, had more to say. In a phone interview with GOLF on Tuesday morning, Simon, a veteran sports agent who does not represent his son but has worked with several high-profile soccer and cricket players, said he was not on site in Spain but spoke extensively to Frank about what happened. Simon said that the putter head “slid on the surface, which players do thousands of times. I watch enough golf to see it. Stupidly, the surface was wet, it was probably a millimeter off and took the turf. The damage it caused was not a foot (deep) trench or a divot – it was a 4 inch-long, 1.5-inch-wide track, not a 1.5 inch-wide track.”
Simon continued: “I’m not trying to mitigate the damage; the damage is the damage.” In the course of a 45-minute interview, Simon repeatedly stressed this point: He does not condone the “stupid” and “careless” actions of his son, saying: “On a moral level, he deserves some kind of talk or punishment.” But Simon, who said he never knew his son to be a hothead or “club slammer,” also feels that anyone evaluating or judging the incident should know that his son had no intention of harming the green. The episode, as Simon described it, was a flash of petulance, a very unfortunate error by a young player, with an ugly but completely unintended result.
Playing alongside Frank was Santiago Tarrio, a 36-year-old Spaniard who has won twice on DPWT’s feeder circuit, the HotelPlanner Tour, and Ren Yoweza, a 27-year-old Japanese pro who plays heavily on his home tour.
When Frank saw what he had done to the green, he was “scared,” Simon said. Simon said Frank turned to Tarrio and said, “‘S—, what am I doing here?’ And Tarrio and himself – Tarrio watched Frank go down to make his repairs, like he would with a bullet mark or something. He did the best job he could do. And then he said, “What do you think?” The common consensus was that it was fine.”
Simon said he didn’t know of anyone in Frank’s group who had witnessed the putter swipe, as Frank was the last player off the green, with the other players and caddies ahead of him. Even Frank’s caddy, Gary Tilston, didn’t even know about the incident until after the round, Simon said. “Frank didn’t necessarily go to Gary, ‘Oh, my God, this is absolutely tragic.’ Look, what I did,” said Simon. “Because he thought he had fixed what he thought was a relatively small pasture. Obviously not, because it seems the group behind it thought it was more than that. “
Frank said in his first statement that “I should have called an arbitrator to check the repair, and I learned from it.” Instead, he continued with his round, double-bogeying the next hole — the par-4 12th — before birdieing three of the last five holes to sign for a three-under 69 that moved him to 15 under for the week, well within the then-12-under cutline.
After Frank and his fellow players signed their cards, Simon said they were called into a room in the clubhouse and asked what had happened on the 11th green. Simon said one of the two players – he declined to identify which – said: “Frank, on the 11th green, accidentally took a putt off the green. We did our best to fix it and move on.” Then they asked the other two (players) to leave and told Frank he was disqualified.”
Unhappy with the decision, Frank appealed on Monday night through his manager, Martin Williams. Simon said that Frank received a call on Tuesday morning from the DPWT, asking if he could promptly meet with the tour officials at Infinitum, the Q-school location. “So Frank got dressed quickly, drove, went to the umpire’s hut and had the meeting there,” Simon said.
The DPWT said it did not comment on appeals of the decision, but GOLF has learned that the tournament committee has, for the second time, interviewed Frank about the incident and has also reviewed the photographic evidence, the timeline of events and the statements of the players present at the incident, in addition to conducting additional interviews with the same players.
The result: The DQ stands.
“There’s a lot of stuff flying around that doesn’t seem too accurate,” Simon said. “I wasn’t like that, trust me, as expected, I asked a lot of questions, because I want as much clarity as possible in this.”
The rule that gives the committee license to DQ players for misbehavior is submitted “1.2 Rules of Player Conduct”, which states, among other things, that “all players are expected to play in the spirit of the game by taking good care of the course – for example, replacing divots, smoothing bunkers, repairing ball-marks, and not causing unnecessary damage to the course.”
The rule book continues: “There is no penalty under the Rules for failing to act in this way, except that the Committee may disqualify a player for acting against the spirit of the game if it finds that the player has committed serious misconduct.
“‘Serious misconduct’ is player behavior that is so far outside of what is expected in golf that the more severe sanction of removing a player from competition is warranted.
Nowhere in the rule is there any mention of intent, meaning one of the Kennedys’ points of attack – which Frank did not have deliberately damage the green – was, presumably, moot in the decision. The guide to the decision was the extent of the damage itself, as the DPWT explained in its only official comment on the matter, which came via a statement on Tuesday:
Following a request by Frank Kennedy and his team to review the evidence and the decision to disqualify him from the Final Stage of the DP World Tour Qualifying School, a review has been completed. The decision to disqualify him under Rule 1.2a of the Rules of Golf – made by the Qualifying School Rules Committee for serious misconduct in damaging the 11th green during the fourth round – stands.
Call it subjective? No doubt. If Frank had chipped the green after accidentally dropping his putter in a post-birdie-club-flip celebration, would he have been DQ’ed? Unlikely. If he had accidentally damaged not a green, but a fairway, sliding furiously to the ground, would he have been DQ’ed? Also unlikely. Sergio Garcia, who the DPWT disqualified from the Saudi International 2019 for intentionally damage greens, avoided the same punishment for they intentionally damage a tee box to the Masters earlier this year. Augusta National issued Garcia a Code of Conduct notice, but he stopped short of showing him the door.
“Talking about it, it’s almost a little bit like brain surgery,” Simon said of the nuance in the rules. “It requires careful navigation.” Of the rules, he added, “They’re a little ambiguous.”
Frank has played strongly in recent months with seven consecutive cuts in the HotelPlanner Tour. This solid form continued in the Q-school where he crossed the second stage and through four rounds of the third and final stage he was very close to securing a DPWT card. So his search fell through.
“It’s not great,” Simon said of Frank’s emotional state following the DQ. “His first experience of a bit of viral media, and he gets 10,000 comments all saying, ‘Little b—–. “Dig a big trench near the hole.” “You are Sergio Garcia.” Et cetera, et cetera. It’s hard enough.”
Simon said his son’s next immediate step is to hop on a Wednesday morning flight from Spain to Florida. In the coming weeks, they will start looking for next year. Will Frank return to the HotelPlanner Tour in ’27? “Maybe,” said Simon. “We are looking into this.”
Frank’s DQ generated so much buzz in the golf world that even world No. 2 Rory McIlroy was asked about it. “It looks tough, but at the same time, I think it’s good that golf and the authorities are getting away with things like that,” McIlroy said Tuesday from the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. McIlroy added that playing golf at such a high level is not always easy, but with experience comes equanimity. “I think almost 20 years into a career,” he said, “you learn to take the rough with the smooth and know that there will be ups and downs, and as long as you expect things to happen, then you can deal with them in the right way.”
Simon said that Frank has accepted the sentence and will own it and learn from it.
“The only thing I wanted to clarify is the fact that there was no intention,” said Simon. “Is he sorry? One hundred percent is sorry. Do you wish it had not happened? Yes, 100 percent. But was it an intentional act to damage the golf green? One hundred percent was not. And then it’s up to reasonable people – do they believe it was a legitimate accident, whether he deserves a personal penalty, or not?
