No Favorable Lies Here Unlike Other Sports, Professional Golf Never Winks At Those Who Cheat

In almost every sport there is a certain unspoken pride in getting away with cheating.

Throwing a spitball or pretending a trapped ball was caught in baseball. Illegal blocks in football or a subtle forearm to the small of the back in basketball. A thumb in the eye in boxing.

Getting caught brings the expected denials, but with a wink. And the response to cheating by officials in those sports is usually minimal.

Not so in golf, where stories abound of players calling penalties on themselves and where getting caught cheating brings tough responses from colleagues and rules makers.

That’s part of what made Tom Watson’s recently reported remarks that cheating exists among professional golfers so interesting.

“There is no question that people cheat on the tour,” Australian Associated Press quoted the five-time British Open champion as saying earlier this month before the Australian Masters.

“The game is a game of integrity, but you are talking about money and you’re talking about livelihoods,” Watson said. He named no names, saying only: “We know who they are.”

Cheating for the recreational golfer means kicking a ball out from behind a tree or not counting a whiff in the rough.

With the pros it is usually something more subtle, like moving the ball around a spike mark when replacing it on the green after marking the ball. But it has been as blatant as changing a number on the scorecard.

The response by golf officials has always been strong.

In 1992, Swedish pro Johan Tumba was banned for 10 years by the European PGA Tour for altering his scorecard. And in 1983, Vijay Singh was suspended from the Asian Tour for two years for changing his scorecard during a tournament in Indonesia.

There are also cases that aren’t cheating but involve not fully understanding the rules.

Nick Faldo of England had a six-stroke lead with six holes to play in the final round of the 1994 Alfred Dunhill Masters when he was disqualified for removing a stone from a bunker the previous day, something allowed on the European tour but not on the Asian tour.

And in 1987, Craig Stadler was disqualified from the Andy Williams Open in San Diego when TV viewers called after seeing Stadler use a towel to kneel on while hitting a shot from behind a tree. That constituted building a stance, which is against the rules.

Stadler didn’t know he had broken the rule and didn’t include the two-stroke penalty, so he was disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard, costing him the $37,000 second-place money.

“It’s not like other sports where if you try and get away with it and you do get away with it you get a pat on the back,” Watson said about cheating. “In golf you get chastised and ostracized, but there are always going to be people who do it the easy way or do it the way that just isn’t cricket,” he said.

Bill Calfee, executive vice president for competition for the PGA Tour, said golfers don’t view cheating the same way other athletes do.

“It’s a totally different mindset,” Calfee said, noting that decisive action has always been taken if cheating was detected.