Butthead’s Beat: Admit it! You cheat at golf

AMATEUR golfers who claim they have never ‘stretched’ the rather rigid rules of golf surely don’t exist.

The professionals have cameras spying on them in every tournament, but can any amateur swear on the ‘Royal and Ancient’ golf bible that he or she has not at least fluffed up a bit of fairway when placing is allowed?

Or improved a lie in thick grass by picking up the ball to ‘identify’ it and placing it in a better spot (when no one’s looking)?

Or jotted down a six instead of a seven on a par five, ‘innocently’ forgetting about a duff in the rough?

The truth of the matter is that there are so many rules, most amateurs don’t even know they are breaking some of them and others conveniently plead ignorance when it suits them.

More often than not, it doesn’t really make any difference as one’s conscience invariably kicks in and the next ball is shanked into the bush or into the drink.

But what really gets one’s goat is when cheating is just too blatant and the professional ‘prize hunters’ come to the fore. Every golf club in the world probably has them. They don’t actually cheat on the course, but they practise on the quiet, enter high scores only for handicap purposes and then… surprise! They have a humdinger of a round when it really counts.

Every golf committee has probably brain-stormed how to solve this problem, but so far in vain. Handicap systems change as often as new drivers come onto the market. The bottom line, it’s just too easy to engineer one’s handicap if you are that way inclined.

It’s not fair on those who religiously enter every score into the system and take pride in the fact that their game has improved to the extent that their handicap is coming down. (Golf must be one of the few sports where one ‘tries’ to play badly to win at a later stage.)

It’s not fair on the sponsors who generously fork out for prizes, hoping they will get a mention when photographs appear in the press.

However, there’s another, even uglier element to golf, in South Africa in particular, obviously a carryover from our apartheid past.

There’s a tendency to generalise and point fingers at different racial groups, accusing them of being the ‘prime cheaters’.

No names, no pack drill, but that blatant racism does not do the sport any good and club executives need to guard against this with all their might.

Impose an appropriate sanction on any individual golfer caught cheating by all means, but those who openly try to bring a racial slant to the universal problem needs to be sent to Coventry.