Any day now, you can expect to see the story:
"Golfer Billingsley Wadsworth IV today was disqualified from the Greater Bayonne Open for using a wooden golf tee made of an unacceptable grain. Golf officials immediately marched Wadsworth to the 18th green, broke his wedge over a knee, and shot him."They busted another golf outlaw over the weekend. This time, it was Meg "The Machete" Mallon, Born to be Wild. Mallon, the Ma Barker of the Sandtrap, was disqualified from the LPGA's Jamie Farr Kroger Classic Saturday for the unforgivable sin of not picking up her ball before it fell into the hole. What? Is she a golfer or is she a goaltender?
A couple of weeks ago, the same Golf Police busted Greg "The Ripper" Norman, Bad to the Bone. Norman, the Al Capone of the Fairways, was brought to justice when he fessed up to using a ball without the sufficient number of zeros.
The point is this: The clubhouses of America are safe today. Bonnie and Clyde have been stopped. They fought the law, and the law won. Thank goodness. A man plays the wrong Maxfli, a woman doesn't fall on her putt like a fumble, and the next thing you know, someone has 15 clubs in his bag and the whole world has gone to heck, or worse, public courses.
Look, I admire the honor of golf as much as the next guy, and there are plenty of good things you can say about Norman turning himself in. We don't have enough honor in our lives, so it's hard to tweak golf for wrapping itself in it, however tightly.
But exactly who is in charge of ladling out justice here? Rush Limbaugh?
The response of those in charge of both tournaments was this: Off with their heads. Fact is, neither player was trying to cheat. Fact is, there should have been a penalty short of driving both golfers to the airport. Yet both were disqualified, Mallon with the tournament lead, Norman five strokes back.
You know what Mallon's sin was? She didn't get to her putt in time, and it fell into the hole. That happens to me, I don't call it a violation. I call it a gift from God. It is the reward much of life, as well as the ending of Caddyshack, is based upon.
And Norman? He hit a ball with the wrong coding. No, it wasn't one of those "extra-secret-formula, banned-on-the-tour" balls you read about in the back of the golf magazines that talk about how even Michael Jackson could drive it 400 yards. It was an X-90 traveling in disguise as an X-9. Did it help Norman? No. The only thing that would help Norman is a golf ball that knows the Heimlich maneuver on the final day of a Masters.
This is the deal with golf. A few years back, Paul Azinger was disqualified by someone with a remote control. Honest. Some chucklehead watching on television noticed that Azinger had violated Obscure Rule 19-A, Subsection B, and Azinger was dumped. In the '60s, Roberto DiVicenzo lost a chance at a playoff in the Masters when another player wrote his score wrong. Mind you, everyone knew what the right score was, but common sense has no place in the shadow of a rules book.
No one is suggesting that golf throw away its honor. This is a world in which pitchers lube up a baseball to try to throw it past a corked bat to a catcher trying to keep his signs from being stolen. Football players spread Vaseline like grape jam on their jerseys. Hockey players bend sticks and dare opponents to catch them. Basketball players flop onto the floor to sneak a foul call. And amateur golfers? Please. The next great kicker in the NFL is going to be discovered applying a Foot-Joy to a Titleist in the general direction of the fairway. The whole point of other sports seems to be to get away with what you can, so no wonder golf feels superior.
It does seem, however, there should be a better way short of disqualifications. Give Mallon her penalty stroke. Check to make sure Norman's ball wasn't coated with flubber. Make him play the next day with X-outs. But do the right thing.
Put it this way: If George Washington went to the head of the PGA and said, "I cannot tell a lie, I cut down that cherry tree," would you immediately throw him out of the presidential race?
Or would you just check to see if his ax conformed to tour standards?