Being labelled a cheater on the golf course is a black mark that\u2019s virtually impossible to remove. Whether it\u2019s a wild cheating scandal at Q School or someone fluffing their lie during a Saturday morning scramble, cheating in golf isn\u2019t new.<\/p>\n
But what happened recently at WingHaven Country Club near St. Louis in Missouri rocked the local golf scene and is spreading after the culprit went on ESPN Radio in St. Louis to confess.<\/p>\n
To set the scene, the events happened during a member-member championship at WingHaven last weekend. The golfer in question, who we won\u2019t name to avoid piling on, is a plus-2 handicap and played college golf at a junior college before having what he described to ESPN as \u201ca cup of coffee\u201d at Eastern Illinois University.<\/p>\n
At the WingHaven event, there was a hole-in-one pot. The golfer in question was in the first tee time of the day, which he learned before the round. He told his group before they teed off that his grandmother had been having health issues and he was expecting a phone call that he might have to take. On the third green, the golfer told his group he got the call. So he ran up to the fourth tee box and teed off to keep up the pace of play. He told his group he\u2019d meet them on the tee when he\u2019d finished his call.<\/p>\n
The fourth hole is a par-3. When the group caught up to their playing partner, they asked him how he fared with his tee shot. He said he \u201cthinned it a little,\u201d but didn\u2019t see where it landed. When they got up to the green, there was a pitchmark on the green . . . and the golfer\u2019s ball in the hole.<\/p>\n
Naturally, a celebration occurred, but there was understandably some scepticism because no one had witnessed the shot. Players sought out the superintendent, who reviewed security camera footage from a maintenance shed 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. Aware he had put himself in an untenable spot, the golfer resigned his membership.<\/p>\n
News of the faked ace quickly made its way around the St. Louis golf scene, leading the culprit to call into the ESPN show, \u201cThe Morning After,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do something as dumb as I did, there are consequences for that,\u201d the golfer said. \u201cSome are very fair, and some aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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 \u2014 breaking trust with a marriage that I have had for five years next month. We have two kids that are under 3 and it\u2019s 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\u2019s the worst part. The golf is secondary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked why he made the decision that will follow him for the rest of his golfing life, the golfer did not provide much of an explanation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so upset that we were giving a couple shots back,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s no excuse. There\u2019s no excuse for what I did, and I was completely in the wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s really no motivation. Just complete stupidity and we were giving two shots back to the field and that\u2019s not an excuse. There\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hole-in-one manipulator ended his appearance on ESPN Radio in St. Louis with a plea to those piling on \u2014 to not bring his family into the repercussions that are headed his way.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say he\u2019s only sorry because he got caught and that might have been true at first,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the messages that I\u2019m going to get, I\u2019m just someone to attack. People that I\u2019ve never met in my life. People that don\u2019t 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\u2019s fine. I can take that. But my family doesn\u2019t deserve that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a cheater on the golf course,\u201d the golfer said. \u201cI made a bad decision and I have to suffer the consequences. I\u2019m trying to move forward as best I can and it\u2019s been rough. \u2026 I\u2019m trying to move forward and do what\u2019s right for my family and be there for them and the two young kids that don\u2019t deserve this. The wife that doesn\u2019t deserve this. It\u2019s terrible. I don\u2019t want sympathy from anybody. I don\u2019t deserve sympathy. But I just wish people would tread lightly on my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has been said that a reputation is earned in drops and lost in buckets. At WingHaven Country Club\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
This article originated on Golf.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Being labelled a cheater on the golf course is a black mark that\u2019s virtually impossible to remove. Whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[44,18737],"class_list":["post-48105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-golf","tag-golf-cheat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}