Golfer didn’t deceive man in the mirror

We interrupt the concerns about cheating, corner-cutting and rule-skirting, to bring a nomination to the floor.

J.P. Hayes, for sportsman of the year.

The newest candidate for most honest athlete in America is a 43-year-old golfer who hasn’t won a PGA tournament in six years. Whose deeds have seldom required headlines.

Until now.

The saga of J.P. Hayes has been making all the talk show rounds this week. How he disqualified himself from a PGA Tour qualifier when he found out he had accidentally used an unapproved golf ball for two shots.

Not two rounds or two holes. Two shots.

Let’s be clear on this. Hayes didn’t discover the error until he was back in his hotel room, his scores for the day safely in the book. If he stays quiet, he’d have a good chance to earn his PGA Tour card for next season.

You’re 43, you’re still out on the Tour, where the courses are lush and the crowds are large and the money is vast. Your career is in clover.

If he stays quiet, no one knows.

Except Hayes, and the man he sees in the mirror when he shaves.

So he blows the whistle on himself, understanding that disqualification will follow as surely as a downhill putt gains speed.

Now, he gets into PGA Tour events next season only when the sponsors are willing to grant him one of their special exemptions. The way they always used to invite Michelle Wie for no particular good reason, except to hype the gate.

Will Hayes – last seen winning the 2002 John Deere Classic – hype anyone’s gate? He should.

But even if he doesn’t, any sponsors who have available spots and turn their backs on this guy should be dunked in their own water hazards.

“I’ve always had a pretty good perspective on golf, I think,” he said at a tournament last year.

”I would say everybody out here (on the PGA Tour) would have done the same thing,” he was quoted in news reports as saying this week of his mishap. “It’s not the end of the world.”

Next time someone catches an NFL team trying to clandestinely tape an opponent’s sideline signals, think of Hayes.

Next time an athlete flunks a drug test, think of Hayes.

Next time, a corked bat is found in the bat rack, think of Hayes.

Professional golf is not everyone’s cup of latte. To some it is slow and ponderous and doesn’t mean anything, unless Tiger Woods is leading.

But there is a value system that is almost quaint, given today’s raucous landscape.

Basketball post players fighting for airspace get away with everything they can that the referees won’t see, signals are stolen in baseball, hockey keeps the penalty boxes busy, the Olympics spend millions trying to catch drug scofflaws, the NCAA chases recruiting scandals.

Meanwhile in golf, they are careful not to step in each other’s putting lines.

Hayes has won more than $7 million on the PGA Tour. This will not cost him his mortgage. But money never seemed to enter into his thinking. Right and wrong did.

How we all yearn, in so many places, for that to happen more often.