Being labeled a cheater on the golf course is a black mark that’s virtually impossible to remove. Whether it’s a wild cheating scandal at Q School or someone fluffing their lie during a Saturday morning scramble, cheating in golf isn’t new.
But what happened recently at WingHaven Country Club near St. Louis rocked the local golf scene and is spreading after the culprit went on ESPN Radio in St. Louis to confess.
To set the scene, the events happened during a member-member championship at WingHaven. The golfer in question, who we won’t name to avoid piling on, is a plus-2 handicap and played college golf at a junior college before having “a cup of coffee” at Eastern Illinois. At this championship, there’s a hole-in-one pot. The golfer in question is in the first tee time of the day and finds that out before the round. He tells his group before they tee off that his grandma has been having health issues and he’s expecting a phone call that he might have to take. On the third green, the golfer tells his group he got the call, so he will run up to the fourth tee box and tee off to keep up the pace of play and meet the rest of them there once he finishes his call.
The fourth hole is a par three. The golfer met his group on that tee box, and they asked how his tee shot was. He said he “thinned it a little,” but didn’t see where it landed. When they got up to the green, there was a divot on the green, and the golfer’s ball was in the hole.
Naturally, a celebration occurred, but there was understandably some skepticism because no one had witnessed the shot. Players went to the superintendent, who went and viewed some security camera footage from a maintenance shed that is near the fourth green. The footage showed the golfer driving past the shed early in the morning toward the fourth green well before his tee time. After that footage surfaced, the golfer informed the super that he had placed the ball in the hole early in the morning and resigned his membership.
News of this scandal quickly made its way around the St. Louis golf scene, leading the culprit to call into The Morning After on Friday to issue an apology, offer an explanation and ask that his family be left out of the reaction to his cheating. The pro shop at WingHaven confirmed the legitimacy of the story to GOLF.
“You do something as dumb as I did, there are consequences for that,” the golfer said. “Some are very fair, and some aren’t.
“I made a terrible mistake. The lack of moral character. I can take the banter and the chatter and the heat because I deserve that from a golf perspective. What I am most worried about is my family — breaking trust with a marriage that I have had for five years next month. We have two kids that are under three and it’s not fair to them for me to put them in that situation where when they walk through a room there is a stigma there that your dad is a [cheater]. So questions that they may get asked or be getting asked down the road, that’s the worst part. The golf is secondary.”
Asked why he made the decision that will follow him for the rest of his golfing life, the perpetrator did not have a good explanation.
“I was so upset that we were giving a couple shots back,” he said. “That’s no excuse. There’s no excuse for what I did, and I was completely in the wrong.
“There’s really no motivation. Just complete stupidity and we were giving two shots back to the field and that’s not an excuse. There’s no excuse for what happened. We were giving two shots back to the field and I went about it just completely and utterly the wrong way.”
The hole-in-one manipulator ended his appearance on ESPN Radio in St. Louis with a plea to those piling on — to not bring his family into the repercussions that are headed his way.
“People say he’s only sorry because he got caught and that might have been true at first,” he said. “But the messages that I’m going to get, I’m just someone to attack. People that I’ve never met in my life. People that don’t know me. People that have no clue who I am. They just want to attack. I get it. I opened up the door to that. That’s fine. I can take that. But my family doesn’t deserve that.
“I’m not a cheater on the golf course,” the perpetrator said. “I made a bad decision and I have to suffer the consequences. I’m trying to move forward as best I can and it’s been rough. … I’m trying to move forward and do what’s right for my family and be there for them and the two young kids that don’t deserve this. The wife that doesn’t deserve this. It’s terrible. I don’t want sympathy from anybody. I don’t deserve sympathy. But I just wish people would tread lightly on my family.”
It has been said that a reputation is earned in drops and lost in buckets. At WingHaven Country Club’s member-member, a swing that never happened cost a golfer something much more valuable than the money he had to return once his ruse was found out.
You can listen to the entire ESPN Radio interview here.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: golf.com
