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

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. 

Justin Doeden: 'Biggest mistake I have made in my life'

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us.” - John 1:9 

At the PGA Tour Canada’s Ottawa Open in July, officials opened an investigation into a scorecard controversy. 

That same weekend, Justin Doeden, then 28, with one PGA Tour start and one appearance on the Korn Ferry Tour, admitted to the transgression. 

“I am here to confess of (sic) the biggest mistake I have made in my life to date,” he wrote on social media. “I cheated in golf. This is not who I am. I let my sponsors down. I let my competitors down. I let my family down. I let myself down. I pray for your forgiveness. John 1:9.” 

According to developmental golf website Monday Q Info, which covers the qualifier circuit, the saga began with other players noticing that Doeden was listed at 3-under. These players also knew Doeden made a double-bogey 7 on the par 5 18th hole. From the report:

“The walking scorer and the two players in the group confirmed that Doeden went for the green in two but hit it in the water fronting the green. After taking a drop, he hit his fourth into the front bunker and missed from about 7 feet for bogey. He tapped in for 7."

The concerned players approached officials, who pulled the scorecard to discover a 5 etched into the box beneath hole 18.  

Doeden played collegiately at the University of Minnesota and had 43 showings on the PGA Tour Canada. In this instance, he violated the integrity of a professional tournament, which is a more serious violation compared to someone lying about strokes at the company scramble.  

That doesn’t make the average scramble shaver any purer. 

“It's obviously very disappointing when anybody cheats because the game of golf was built and founded on honesty and integrity and that's what we try to teach our younger generations, and that's what we all try to be, role models for that and uphold the rules,” World Golf Hall of Famer Bernhard Langer said ahead of the Senior Open in July, not long after Doeden’s mea culpa went online. 

Specifically in Doeden’s case, Langer said, there are external pressures of trying to make sufficient money and earn tour cards. 

“I don't know what circumstances this player is living under and what's going on and whether that one stroke would improve his life dramatically,” Langer said. “I have no idea. I can't imagine it.

“But there's tremendous stress out there, a lot of pressure. Some of these people, they have family, they have young kids and they live from this paycheck to the next one, so it can be very tempting.”

Asking a field of competitors to police themselves requires faith. Still, changing a scorecard appeared unfathomable to the two-time Masters champion.

“You're not just breaking a rule,” Langer, 66, said. “You're actually stupid.”

Bending (the many) rules part of game, from legends to amateurs

The stigma that comes with being a founded cheater follows a professional player forever. Just ask Vijay Singh, who committed a similar faux paus to Doeden as a 22-year-old at the 1985 Indonesian Open.

Cheating accusations have followed Patrick Reed throughout his professional career, from his time in college at the University of Georgia to being penalized for moving sand in a bunker in 2019 to earlier this year, when he was accused by a fellow pro of cheating at the Dubai Classic; Reed took a drop after he said his tee shot became lodged in a palm tree. However, video showed that the ball had flown through a different tree closer to the hole.

Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee came out with such vigor against Reed's potential cheating that the 2018 Masters champion sued the television personality, seeking more than $800 million in damages. A federal judge dismissed the suit in November.

Lawsuits about cheating on tour have been happening for five decades. In 1972, after 27 LPGA Tour members signed an affidavit calling for punishment against Jane Blalock, she filed an antitrust lawsuit. The following year, a judge ruled that LGPA players could not police their own (at the time, LPGA players ran the organization themselves).

According to a New York Times story from 1987, the year before she retired, Blalock denied she ever cheated and said she was the victim of older, jealous players as she began to leave her mark on the tour.

Of course, anti-altruist golfers at that level need not just worry about their fellow peers catching them. There are scores of fans watching on television from their homes across the world ready to pounce on any opportunity they may see that rises to the level of a rules violation — even if the golfers are not intentionally cheating.

Then there are the conscientious swindlers. Colloquially known as "sandbagging," a player deceives his or her competition about their handicap by a number of strokes to gain an advantage.

Professional golf has not been immune from a performance-enhancing drug scandal, either. In 2014, Bhavik Patel became the second player suspended by the PGA Tour for PED use, which he admitted to using in an effort to recover from an injury faster. Patel, who was 24 and only held conditional Web.com Tour status at the time, went on to make 101 starts on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour (four since 2020).

Arnold Palmer doesn't escape cheating spotlight

Even the sport's most heroic figures are not immune from a connection to cheating. In his 2004 book, longtime CBS Sports golf analyst Ken Venturi wrote that Arnold Palmer took advantage of the rules to the extent of cheating at the 1958 Masters, the legend's first of four victories at Augusta.

The controversy boiled down: Palmer plugged a 4-iron shot near a bunker and ended up double-bogeying when a rules official did not grant him the relief he believed he was entitled to. Venturi, Palmer's playing partner that day, said Palmer did not declare he would take a drop anyway and play the hole, which he parred. A group of judges later overruled the first judge and counted Palmer's three, and he went on to win by a stroke.

“Nobody, not even Palmer, is bigger than the game,” Venturi wrote.

“I firmly believe that he did wrong and that he knows that I know he did wrong.”

As the golf world rushed to defend Palmer, Venturi released a statement through his publisher saying specifically he did not view Palmer as a "cheat."

Was it cheating? Or was an all-time great simply flexing knowledge?

The USGA promotes a "Rules of Golf" hub on its website. Even with those helpful links, tutorials, guides, seminars, camps and officials (for the more competitive and professional matches) sometimes the rules still aren't clear enough.

Just make sure you shake hands after the round. It's the right thing to do.

Follow Chris Bumbaca on social media @BOOMbaca