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CHEATERS
Defense against cheaters: To paraphrase the old adage, "Keep your partners close and your opponents closer." If you suspect something, watch your opponent's every move and let him know he's being watched. This will yield a double benefit: He'll be aware of the scrutiny and perhaps be distracted by it, and he'll be nervous about inadvertently breaking the rules, let alone cheating. But ultimately there's only one way to deal with a confirmed cheater: Never play with him again.
Forewarned is forearmed. Here are a few of the cheater types you may encounter.
Check back here every week to see more Cheater Types
"The Improver"
"He who have fastest cart never have to play bad lie." --MICKEY MANTLE
This guy rushes to his ball and improves his lie, either before his opponent arrives, or while everyone else is watching someone hit (all eyes are naturally drawn to a ball in flight). Or he'll bend down, ostensibly to move debris from around his ball, and deftly nudge it into a better lie. Or pretend to inspect the ball to "identify" it, improving the lie in the process. Some will actually place the ball on a tee if left unsupervised long enough. Careful surveillance is thus the only effective countermeasure against the Improver.
"The Accountant"
The Accountant can't keep track of all his strokes.
"I used to play golf with a guy who cheated so badly that he once had a hole in one and wrote down a zero on the scorecard." --BOB BRUE
The Accountant should be audited on every hole.
"The Mechanic"
This individual illegally modifies the grooves on his irons to make the ball stop more quickly on the green. Or uses a souped-up ball. Or drills holes in his driver to infuse it with mercury. The surest way to defeat a mechanic is by exposing and disqualifying his doctored equipment.
"The Ball Hawk"
When the Ball Hawk loses his ball in the woods, he simply drops another. "Here it is!" he shouts. Some ball hawks have a hole in the pants pocket for discreet dropping.
How to handle a ball hawk? An effective albeit elaborate method is detailed in Goldfinger (1964). British secret agent James Bond (Sean Connery) is assigned to bring down Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), an international master criminal who loves gold and golf. When Bond drops an ingot worth £5,000 on the practice green in front of Goldfinger, the game is on.
Cut to the back nine: With the match all square, Goldfinger loses his drive in the rough. Oddjob (Harold Sakata), Goldfinger's Korean manservant-bodyguard-caddie (with the lethal derby), furtively drops a second ball through his pants leg. Bond sees it, as does his caddie, who says, "If that's 'is ball, I'm Arnold Palmer." To which Bond replies, "T'isn't." "How d'ya know?" asks the caddie. "I'm standing on it," says Bond.
Bond slips the ball into his pocket, allowing Goldfinger to play the second ball. Goldfinger makes a 5 to Bond's 6 and wins the hole. Ever the sportsman, Bond obligingly retrieves Goldfinger's ball from the cup, but in the process replaces it with another one. Goldfinger then tees off with it on the 18th without detecting the switch, holes out, and thinks he's won the match. Bond again retrieves the ball from the cup and "notices" it isn't Goldfinger's, assesses the penalty--loss of hole for playing the wrong ball--and wins the match and the bet.
When playing someone who can miraculously find a lost ball no matter how deep in the woods (as long as it's his), keep a close watch, and enforce the five-minute rule. The James Bond switch should be considered an advanced technique.
"The Caddie/Ball Hawk"
Some people seem to think caddies are to cheating what real estate brokers are to selling your house: You might be able to manage without them, but it's worth the price to let them do the dirty work.
"Picasso"
Picasso carries a can of white spray paint in his bag to illegally draw a circle around his ball when no one is looking. (A white circle indicates "ground under repair" and affords a free drop.) If you catch Picasso in the act, walk up to him, seize his spray can, rip off the valve as if stripping the epaulet from the shoulder of a disgraced officer, look him in the eye, and growl: "I may not know much about art, but I know what I don't like!"
"The Inchworm"
This player illegally marks his ball to avoid a spike mark or to get closer to the hole. Inchworming is probably the most common form of cheating because it's virtually undetectable. It's certainly the most common form of alleged cheating by touring pros:Bob Toski withdraws from the Senior Tour in 1986 in the wake of inchworming charges, and Jane Blalock is suspended by the LPGA in 1972 for the same reason. Blalock had been Toski's student, and when told of her suspension Toski says she probably slipped into the habit "subconsciously."
During the 1997 Trophée Lancôme, Swedish pro Jarmo Sandelin accuses Mark O'Meara of inchworming by marking his ball and then replacing it a few centimeters closer to the hole. O'Meara wins the title and denies wrongful intent. A year later in the same tournament, Lee Westwood accuses Sandelin of grounding his putter behind the ball and causing it to move. Sandelin insists he hadn't grounded it, though he admits the ball moved. I witnessed a flagrant form of inchworming at a tournament in Las Vegas some years ago. My foursome included the entertainer Peter Lind Hayes, a retired oral surgeon from St. Louis, and a local resident who, when marking his ball with a quarter, would kneel down, flip the coin several feet toward the hole, pick up his ball, and then, when it was his turn to putt, replace the ball at the closer point. (This wasn't inchworming, this was grasshoppering.) Needless to say I was taken aback, not only by the flipping, but also because no one challenged the man. Then my caddie clued me in: The offender was the reputed head of a well-known but illegal family business. As it happened, our group finished out of the money, so, no harm no foul, I chose not to take the fellow to task.
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