Simon Kennedy acknowledges his son screwed up. No one is disputing that. The smoking gun was right there on the 11th green on the Hills course at Infinitum resort in Spain, about 60 miles down the coast from Barcelona: damaged turf caused by the putter head of Simon’s 21-year-old tour-pro son, Frank. The torn-up patch has since been repaired, but if you know where to look, you can still make out the outline of the byproduct of a golfer behaving badly.
The incident occurred Monday, in the fourth round of the DP World Tour’s Qualifying School’s six-round finale. Frank Kennedy, who was born in England but raised in the golf hotbed of Jupiter, Fla., arrived on 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 whittles 156 hopefuls down to 15 DPWT card-earners. Kennedy hit the 11th green in regulation, missed what he felt was a makeable birdie putt and tapped in. As he was walking off the green, he did what many golfers do when blowing off steam: He drew back his putter like a polo stick, with the intent, he said, of swinging the club through the air.
One problem: Kennedy misjudged the putter’s arc, he said, and instead of whooshing through space, the club gouged the green — which ultimately resulted in DPWT officials disqualifying Kennedy for a Code of Conduct violation. The extent of the damage from Kennedy’s actions is unclear. Monday Q Info’s Ryan French, who broke the story, reported that multiple sources told him that Kennedy “took ‘a divot’ out of the 11th green. One player described it as ‘a one foot divot’ about 4 feet behind the hole.”
Kennedy, in a Monday statement, said that the damage was “accidental.” On Tuesday, he issued another statement in which he characterized the mar as a “4-inch graze” and said “this will be my final statement on the matter.”
Frank’s father, though, 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 many high-profile soccer and cricket players, said he was not onsite in Spain but has spoken extensively to Frank about what happened. Simon said the putter head “skidded across the surface, which players do thousands of times. I watch enough golf to see it. Stupidly, the surface was wet, he was probably a millimeter off and he caught 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, a graze, not a divot.”
Simon continued, “I’m not trying to mitigate the damage; the damage is the damage.” Over the course of a 45-minute interview, Simon repeatedly stressed this point: He doesn’t condone his son’s “foolish” and “careless” actions, saying, “On a moral level, he deserves some sort of a talking to or punishment.” But Simon, who said he has never known his son to be a hothead or “club slammer,” also feels that anyone who is assessing or passing judgment on the incident should know that his son did not intend to damage the green. The episode, as Simon described it, was a flash of petulance, a deeply regrettable error from a young player, with an ugly but wholly unintentional result.
Playing alongside Frank were Santiago Tarrio, a 36-year-old Spaniard who twice has won on the DPWT’s feeder circuit, the HotelPlanner Tour, and Ren Yonezawa, a 27-year-old Japanese pro who largely plays on his home tour.
When Frank saw what he had done to the green, he was “shocked,” Simon said. Simon said Frank turned to Tarrio and said, “‘S—, what do I do here?’ And Tarrio and himself — Tarrio watched as Frank went down to do his repairs, as he would do with a ball mark or anything like that. He did the best job he could do. And then he said, ‘What do you think?’ The common consensus was that he was OK.”
Simon said he didn’t know of anyone in Frank’s group who had witnessed the putter swipe, as Frank was the last player to exit the green, with the other players and caddies ahead of him. Even Frank’s caddie, 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’ve done,’” Simon said. “Because he thought he’d repaired what he thought was a relatively small graze. Obviously not, because it sounds like the group behind thought it was more than that.”
Frank said in his first statement that he “should have called a referee to check the repair, and I’ve learned from that.” Instead, he continued on with his round, double-bogeying the ensuing hole — the par-4 12th — before birdieing three of the final five holes to sign for a three-under 69 that moved him to 15 under for the week, well inside the then-12-under cutline.
After Frank and his playing partners had signed their cards, Simon said they were summoned into a room in the clubhouse and asked about what had happened on the 11th green. Simon said one of the two players — he declined to identify which one — said, “‘Frank, on the 11th green, accidentally took a graze out of the green. We did our best to repair it and move on.’ Then they asked the other two [players] to leave and told Frank he was being disqualified.”
Displeased with the decision, Frank appealed it on Monday night through his manager, Martin Williams. Simon said Frank received a Tuesday-morning call from the DPWT, asking if he could promptly convene with tour officials at Infinitum, the Q-school venue. “So Frank quickly got dressed, drove in, went to the referee’s hut and had the meeting in there,” Simon said.
The DPWT said it does not comment on ruling appeals, but GOLF has learned that the tournament committee did, for a second time, interview Frank about the incident and also re-reviewed photographic evidence, the timeline of events and statements from players present at the incident, in addition to conducting additional interviews with the same players.
The result: The DQ would stand.
“There’s various things flying around that don’t seem to be too accurate,” Simon said. “I wasn’t there so, trust me, as you would expect, I’ve asked a lot of questions, because I want as much clarity as possible in this.”
The rule that gives committees license to DQ players for misbehavior falls under “1.2 Standards 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, by replacing divots, smoothing bunker, 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 contrary to the spirit of the game if it finds that the player has committed serious misconduct.
“‘Serious misconduct’ is player behavior that is so far removed from what is expected in golf that the most severe sanction of removing a player from the competition is justified.”
Nowhere in the rule is there any mention of intent, meaning one of the Kennedys’ sticking points — that Frank did not deliberately damage the green — was, presumably, moot in the decision. Driving the ruling was the extent of the damage itself, as the DPWT spelled out in its only official comment on the matter, which came by way of a Tuesday statement:
Following a request from Frank Kennedy and his team to review the evidence and the decision to disqualify him from the DP World Tour Qualifying School Final Stage, a review has been completed. The ruling to disqualify him under Rule 1.2a of the Rules of Golf — made by the Qualifying School Rules Committee for serious misconduct for damaging the 11th green during the fourth round — stands.
Subjective call? Undoubtedly. If Frank had gouged 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 by angrily swiping at the ground would he have been DQ’ed? Also unlikely. Sergio Garcia, who the DPWT disqualified from the 2019 Saudi International for intentionally damaging greens, avoided the same punishment for intentionally damaging a tee box at the Masters earlier this year. Augusta National issued Garcia a Code-of-Conduct warning but stopped short of showing him the door.
“Talking about this, 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 are a little bit ambiguous.”
Frank has been playing steadily in recent months with seven consecutive made-cuts on the HotelPlanner Tour. That solid form continued into Q-school where he breezed through the second stage and through four rounds of the third and final stage was tantalizingly close to securing a DPWT card. Then his quest came crashing down.
“He’s not great,” Simon said of Frank’s emotional state in the wake of the DQ. ”His first experience of a little bit of viral media, and he’s getting 10,000 comments all saying, ‘You little b—–.’ ‘You dig a big trench near the hole.’ ‘You are Sergio Garcia.’ Et cetera, et cetera. It’s pretty tough.”
Simon said his son’s immediate next step is to hop a Wednesday-morning flight from Spain back to Florida. In the coming weeks, they’ll start looking ahead to next year. Will Frank return to the HotelPlanner Tour in ’27? “Maybe,” Simon said. “We’ll review that.”
Frank’s DQ has generated so much golf-world buzz that even world No. 2 Rory McIlroy was asked about it. “It seems harsh but, at the same time, I think it’s good that golf and the authorities are cracking down on things like this,” McIlroy said Tuesday from the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. McIlroy added that playing golf at such a high level isn’t always easy but with experience comes equanimity. “I think nearly 20 years into a career,” he said, “you learn to take the rough with the smooth and know that there’s going to be highs and lows, and as long as you expect those things to happen, then you can deal with them the right way.”
Simon said Frank has accepted the ruling and will own it and learn from it.
“The only thing he wanted to clarify is the fact that there was no intent,” Simon said. “Is he sorry? One-hundred percent he’s sorry. Does he wish it hadn’t happened? Yes, 100 percent. But was it an intentional act to damage the golf green? One-hundred percent no, it wasn’t. And then it’s up to reasonable people — do they believe that it was a legitimate accident, be that it deserves a penalty or not? Personally, I believe him.”
