A game of integrity? Golf has a long tradition of cheating and sandbagging

29/12/2023 14:00

(Editor’s note: This is one installment of a 10-part series on cheating in sports by the staff at USA Today Sports.)

Apply the lens of cheating to golf, and it becomes a paradoxical sport. The game roots itself in integrity and class. Yet even with a rule book more than 200 pages thick, few activities lend themselves to fudging it more than golf.

And in golf, cheating often goes unpunished. It's understandable in some cases, from the PGA Tour to matches among friends at the local municipal course. Most players – well, maybe not those on the PGA Tour – participating in a competition walk (or drive) to their shots by their lonesome. That isolation can be tempting.

A hand wedge – moving the ball to a better placement. A step with an exaggerated kick that knocks the ball from the rough into the fairway. Can't find the ball? No one will see you drop the Titleist 4 – "weren't you playing a 2 before?" – on the back side of the green. That 6 on hole 7? It was actually a 5, we're not counting the swing that topped a ball 27 yards. Sandbag that sucker by lying about a handicap.

Maybe cheating is golf's most time-honored tradition after all.