Minnesota Golfer - Directory 2013 - 26

Dan Sachau, a psychology professor at
Minnesota State University, Mankato,
was curious about cheating and golfers'
attitudes about it. Together with Luke
Simmering, a Ph.D. student at Louisiana
Tech University, and Max Adler from
Golf Digest magazine, he conducted a
survey (see sidebar, p. 27) of 2,330 golfers
to examine it. They gave the participants
17 different golf situations in
four different settings and asked them if
they would break the rules, and if they
thought other players would cheat.
" In our study, we found that high
handicappers are more likely to cheat
than low handicappers, " Sachau says.
" We did not find a gender difference,
nor did we find an age difference. "
The respondents, in general, played
n 1953, USGA Executive Director
Joseph C. Dey published an article
in USGA Journal and Turf Management
entitled " Some Principles behind
the Rules of Golf. " He said the purpose
of the Rules of Golf, according to
Richard S. Tufts, a vice president of the
USGA and longtime student of golf,
was " to make sure, as far as possible,
that everyone plays the same game. "
Tufts, according to Dey, maintained
that underlying the Rules were three
basic principles: " Play the course as
you find it; play the ball as it lies; and
play fair. " Tufts published a book on
the subject in 1960, entitled The Principles
Behind the Rules of Golf.
Dey said that a majority of the Rules
of Golf deal with situations where the
first two principles won't apply-but
" they are pretty well governed by the
third principle. " You have the Decisions
book to cover many situations,
but if you play fair, you will know how
to proceed.
Ultimately, Dey said " the best way
to learn the Rules is to keep their spirit
uppermost. For there is a spirit about
golf, and it's very much the spirit of
life. We have free choice to decide. Do
we decide on the basis of fairness or of
total selfishness? As in life, so in golf we
are really our own referees. " - J.O.
by the rules, but their compliance varied
over a range of scenarios and settings.
The survey showed that 92 percent
would never accept an incorrect lower
score marked down for
them by a playing partner,
but only 29 percent
would, in all situations,
assess penalty strokes for
mistakenly carrying an extra
club in their bag (Rule
4-4). The survey indicated
that 62 percent would violate
that rule when playing
a recreational round for
handicap score-posting
purposes-which was the
highest number of rule
breakers in any scenario/
setting.
It appeared that the
garnered the highest percentage of rule
breakers of any in a tournament setting.
Perhaps more
interesting
are
the
survey's findings related to a golfer's
perception of other golfers. The survey
reflected a tendency for people who
said they never broke the rules to believe
that fewer " typical golfers " would
follow suit. For example, 87 percent of
the survey participants said they would
never fail to count their whiff as a stroke,
but only 54 percent of those rules followers
thought other golfers would do
the same.
Conversely, a very high percentage of
admitted cheaters in the survey believed
that everyone else also breaks the rules.
" Some players cheat because they
Play the
course as
you find it.
Play the ball
as it lies.
When you
can't do
those, play
fair.
respondents were more apt to play by
the rules when someone was watching.
Generally, only 1.3 percent would cheat
when playing in a tournament, but 9
percent said if they conceded a putt (a
gimme) in a tournament and then putted
anyway and missed, they would count
the putt as already made. Even though
gimmes are not allowed in stroke play
(particularly in tournaments), putts are
conceded in match play and there is no
penalty for putting out after the concession.
Yet, this scenario on the survey
24
MINNESOTA GOLFER Directory 2013
think that others are cheating, " says Sachau.
" [They're thinking that] not cheating
puts the honest golfer at a disadvantage.
In the study, we found that about
95 percent of the rule breakers thought
that most people cheat. It was almost
always justified by 'that
was what everyone else
was doing.' And the more
stories that are out there
about players cheating,
the worse it gets and the
greater the motive for
cheating. "
Sachau's survey results
may also relate to a developing
belief among
sports psychologists that
there is a difference between
athletes who have
a master orientation to
a game and those who
have a status orientation.
The master-oriented athletes compete
because they want to master a sport
(which we all know they can never do
in golf, right?); status-oriented golfers
compete to look more competent (low
handicap, winning scores) to others.
Sachau said psychologists are just now
studying this relationship; although his
survey did not test for that tendency , he
was able to make some hypotheses.
" I could imagine that status-oriented
golfers are more likely to cheat, " Sachau
says. " Cheating serves the primary goal
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Minnesota Golfer - Directory 2013

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