If there’s one sport that seems to ask the most of its participants in terms of honor, at least at the professional level, it’s golf.
It’s a sport where it would be very easy to cheat by moving your ball even an inch or so — improving your lie — and turning a terrible shot into an OK one. The late Mickey Mantle, who enjoyed golf as a hobby, once jokingly said that the man with the fastest golf cart never had a bad lie.
There are wonderful examples of professional golfers who called rules violations on themselves that otherwise went unnoticed and cost them thousands of dollars in prize money.
So of course one of America’s best known, most famous golfers is that great example of honor … Donald Trump.
Rick Reilly, one of our greatest sportswriters, wrote a book about Trump and golf, fittingly called “Commander in Cheat.” As one might expect, Trump cheats in almost epic proportions. He doesn’t just move his ball to improve his lie, he kicks balls out of the rough into the fairway.
Indeed, Reilly says he saw Secret Service agents throwing balls out of deep roughs into fairways for their president.
The closest I’ve ever come to playing in real tournaments were best-ball church and fraternity tournaments. I wasn’t a big factor in the scoring in either one, although there was one great irony. In tournaments like this, there is always one hole for which a prize is awarded for the drive closest to the pin.
I actually won that hole in both tournaments, one on a fluky shot and the other on one of the best shots of my life.
I don’t really play anymore. A bad back and 74 birthdays have pretty well eliminated my golf game.
I never got good enough to cheat, but I did emjoy myself.