The Rules of Golf Gone Overkill?

I'm reading a book right now called Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major by John Feinstein. It's a decent book but it tends to focus a little too much on the depressing stories if you ask me.

One passage is about a player named Pat Bates that makes it all the way to the finals and then withdraws. During the second stage of Q school, he had placed his coin to mark his ball on the green and then as he stood up, dropped the ball and it landed directly on top of the coin. Not wanting to hold up play for a ruling, and unsure as to whether or not the coin had actually moved, he putted out and continued on. Later, he discovered that in that instance that there are two rules. 1) That the benefit of the doubt goes to the player if there is uncertainty about whether or not the coin moved, and 2) that if it did move, it is a one stroke penalty.

Pat was crushed and withdrew from the tournament on the grounds that he felt he had signed for an incorrect number at second stage. Call me crazy, but I have to wonder how he justified feeling so guilty given the first rule. If there was doubt, and there certainly was, then he should have been fine.

What would you have done? Is there more to this that I'm not seeing?