PARKER — In a crazy sports world in which baseball players steal signs, it’s not a holding penalty in the NFL if you don’t get caught and a disgraced Tour de France winner claims everybody cheats, golf is hopelessly out of touch.
Cheat to win?
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I knew I broke a rule,” golfer Fuzzy Zoeller said.
There is no cheating in golf, unless you count what Tiger Woods did behind his wife’s back.
In golf, there is no victory without honor.
So as the graybeards and potbellies of the Champions Tour hit 7-irons into the wind Wednesday at the Colorado Golf Club preparing for the Senior PGA Championship, you had to wonder: Are these the last honest men in sports?
Honesty has become a notion so quaint, it would get you laughed out of many rooms in America, from the dressing stalls in pro leagues to the halls of Congress.
“Interesting if we could take those clowns in Washington and put them on a golf course and make them have to show their dirty laundry and not hide behind some committee. Then, I think we could get some things done in this country,” Hale Irwin said.
Get this: Golfers call penalties on themselves. What are they, saps? You mean there’s still room for sportsmanship in the win-at- all-costs United States, where if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying?
At a golf tournament in South Carolina last month, Brian Davis might have cost himself $400,000 by calling a two-stroke penalty on himself when he moved a reed with his backswing during a playoff against Jim Furyk.
Contrast that with a recent scene at Coors Field, where a Philadelphia coach was busted in the bullpen peering through binoculars in the direction of home plate. When Colorado accused the visitors of trying to steal signs, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel retorted, “Keep crying.”
Of course, baseball is a sport with a grand tradition of any means necessary to gain an edge, from spitballs to steroids. Golf is different. Always has been. Refusing praise for calling a penalty on himself that cost him the 1925 U.S. Open championship, legendary golfer Bobby Jones humbly said, “You may as well praise me for not robbing a bank.”
Touring pros get grief for wearing funny clothes. But we also need to give them this: Golfers don’t believe in hitting below those white belts.
Ask Irwin, who can speak from the perspective of sinking putts to win the U.S. Open three times or tackling running backs as a former safety for the University of Colorado football team.
“I’ve played both. I’ve played out there (on the football field), and I gouged and I’ve been gouged. I kicked and I’ve been kicked,” Irwin said.
Whining at the referees has become a more elaborate art form than tattoos in the NBA. Golfers penalizing themselves would be considered ridiculously Pollyannish in the NFL.
“You’re right,” Irwin said. “I’ve yet to see a football player go to the ref and say, ‘I’m sorry, but I was holding that guy, throw a flag.’ “
From pitcher Roger Clemens to cyclist Floyd Landis, the MO in sports by an accused cheat is to deny, deny, deny until the burden of proof is too great to ignore.
Standing on the front nine at the Masters a few years back, Zoeller eyeballed a shot and declared to his caddie it appeared to be a 3-iron. That’s when the trouble began.
“I looked in my bag and there were two of them,” said Zoeller, realizing full well that carrying too many clubs is a no-no. “Heck, I could’ve played on and nobody would have known. But that’s not the rules of golf. So you call the penalty, you accept it and you move on.”
Are golfers more honest than athletes who throw a discus or pump iron? Or is golf simply a more honorable game than baseball or hockey?
“I think it’s a more honorable game,” said David Eger, who was the senior director of rules and competition at the United States Golf Association during the 1990s before leaving his desk job and joining the senior tour as a player.
From the pain on his face every time he hears the whistle of a referee, Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs has never committed a foul in his life. Detroit Red Wings winger Dan Cleary once explained how his team won such a high percentage of faceoffs against opponents by saying, “We cheat better than them.” With every record broken at a major-league ballpark or the Olympic track, spectators are forced to ask: Should we credit that feat to human will or the chemistry lab?
The golf course might be the last sporting venue on Earth where rules aren’t made to be broken.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
