Simon Dyson handed suspended two-month European Tour ban

Simon Dyson has been handed a two-month ban from the European Tour, suspended for 18 months, after disqualification from the BMW Masters in October.

Dyson, 35, was disqualified for failing to add a two-shot penalty to his card.

After marking his ball on the eighth green during his second round, Dyson touched the ground in his putting line. He denied deliberately fixing a spike mark in the line of a putt.

As if this punishment wasn’t ridiculously harsh and O.T.T. enough Dyson has also been asked to pay a £30,000 fine and £7,500 in costs.

I’m trying to think of a metaphor that demonstrates just how tough this punishment is in relation to the crime, here’s what I’ve come up with: imagine you’re at work at your desk and you accidentally knock your cup of coffee over and it splashes on your keyboard.

Now imagine that when your boss finds out what happens he/she sends you home and the next day you receive a letter saying that you will face disciplinary action and then you are informed by a disciplinary panel that you will be suspended for two-months without pay, and on top of that you have to pay for a new computer and pay for the cost of the process the company went through to punish you. That is essentially what has gone on here.

I know some might say that it’s the rules and he got what he deserved, which is nonsense because there were much more lenient punishments the panel could and should have handed out, a much less severe fine and a slap on the wrist would have sufficed.

But what this does show is that the rules of golf desperately need to be updated, because it’s clear that the rule Dyson broke and numerous others are stuck in the 19^th century.

Fortunately as Dyson is a 6-time tour winner and seasoned veteran he won’t be too affected by this because he’s good enough to come back and compete for wins again, but I’m concerned that someone not as good someone who battles season after season to keep their card would face a serious battle for their career if they were handed a punishment like this, and all because of an innocent and innocuous error that not one single rules official noticed at the time.