The marketing slogan for the PGA is “These guys are good.” It tells us that golf is a tough game but these guys make it look easy. What it doesn’t tell us is that these guys are incredibly honest and will go to great strides to protect the integrity of the game. Unlike baseball where records have an asterisk (at least in our minds today) or NASCAR where we read all the time about teams taking liberties with their cars to make them faster in, Golf we read about players disqualifying themselves or calling penalties on themselves.

In many sports, as it seems in life itself today, the push is to get away with whatever you can. Do you ever think you would see an Olympic gold medalist stop the ceremony to say that he/she had been using illegal steroids? No, I don’t think so. But last week a man by the name of J. P. Hayes raised his hand to say he had played the wrong ball. Actually, it wasn’t the wrong ball; it was unapproved ball for tournament play. A manufacturer had given it to him to test and it was in his golf bag when he played. He used it in error and nobody knew. He didn’t even know until he was back in his hotel room the next night going through his bag. He could have kept his mouth shut or he could make a call. He called call the PGA and told them of his error. He was disqualified.

This cost him a permanent spot on the PGA tour next year. He will still play in some tournaments but had he not confessed he would have moved on to the final stage of qualifying for the tour and once he made the tour (again, he has been there before) he would play for big money and have nice sponsorships. So, the reward for cheating was high but J.P. Hayes took the higher road and the game of golf is better for it.

For a complete commentary on this episode check out what AP reporter Jim Litke had to say about it – http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/2008-11-20-2938380016_x.htm

In my book No Yelling, I assert that one definition of integrity is what we do when nobody is looking. We can safely say that J. P. Hayes has passed the test. Would you?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 1:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.