KIERAN SHANNON: Tiger ball debate proves golf’s moral code is just fine

Apparently Tiger Woods brought golf into disrepute over the weekend.

It was better for him and for the sport he didn’t win the Masters, otherwise it would forever be known as the tainted green jacket. In fact many feel it would have been even better had he not played on at all.

“It is all about the player and the integrity of the game,” tweeted Greg Norman for one, a couple of days before he’d be inundated for his view on Adam Scott’s breakthrough. “Woods violated the rules, as #1 carries a greater burden. WD for the game.”

In most other sports, such an infraction or an attempt to steal a few inches isn’t frowned upon. It’s smiled upon.

It’s seen as “gaining an edge”, “knowing the limit of the rules and sometimes even going beyond them”, a sign of a winner’s “will to win”.

Michael Jordan is one of only a handful of human beings that’s walked this earth who can rightly rival Woods’ sporting greatness. One story recalled in David Halberstam’s brilliant Playing for Keeps always brings a chuckle to just how competitive he was.

One day he and some of his North Carolina team-mates were playing a fourball. It was a close and hotly-contested game, with bragging rights and a couple of cans of Coke on the line. Walking to the last green the lead was tied.

All four drove at the elevated 18th but Jordan overshot his. Next thing his three friends waiting on the green saw this ball pop up and land within inches of the hole for the unsighted Jordan to walk up and pick up to win the game.

Later that evening his team-mate congratulated him on his shot. Jordan looked around, so no one else could hear.

“I didn’t hit it,” he said. “I just threw it up on the green.”

You can’t get away with such hoodwinking in the US Masters. Not when there’s all those spectators, cameras and one hyper-vigilant viewer at home ready to call the green blazers to point out there’s no way you can have one.

Looking at Augusta from afar over the weekend, this column couldn’t help but think how healthy and robust golf’s moral state must be that it got into such a tizzy over the incident. It wasn’t like Tiger did a Jordan and chucked the ball next to the hole, or picked up a ball and then dropped it down his leg and onto the green a la Bond and Goldfinger. But what he did, clearly to those with a passion and knowledge of the sport, just wasn’t cricket, and by extension, just wasn’t golf.

What made us laugh was that some of those same people with a passion and knowledge of the sport follow other sports, support other teams, coach, even play, for them. And in those sports they would think nothing of one of their own holding an opponent’s jersey or jumping on a man’s back to take a yellow card.

There’s a term sport psychologists have for this phenomenon — moral reasoning. Some sports have a higher moral reasoning and thus a lower tolerance for cheating and gamesmanship. For others, it’s vice-versa.

Nine years ago two of the country’s leading academics in the field — Dr Aidan Moran and Tadhg MacIntyre — along with former Dublin footballer Dr Noel McCaffrey and father of current Dublin player Jack — conducted a fascinating study up in UCD. What they found was that in team sports, moral reasoning was considerably lower, especially in Gaelic Games.

Players identified three sets of rules: the rule book, the referee’s interpretation of those rules and then the players’ own code. It was only cheating, unfair, if you had crossed that last line. Something like kicking on the ground or eye-gouging was unacceptable in the eyes of fellow players, but as for a defender holding a forward’s jersey, or a forward pulling down a back to win a free and fool an unsighted ref, that was fair enough.

“The referee knows that people are going to try and take an advantage so the onus is more on him,” said one Gaelic footballer who participated in the study. “If you get a chance to steal a few yards or hold someone’s jersey off the ball, you’re going to do it.”

Golf operates by a different code, a higher moral reasoning. Even if you think you’d get away with it, you don’t do it. It doesn’t matter who else is watching — you’re watching. You know. You are your own referee. Violate that code and you incur the wrath of your judges, your peers, your fellow pros, as Tiger did over the weekend.

In a way, the vital point about the Tiger controversy wasn’t whether or not he should have been disqualified or disqualified himself. It’s that there was such a debate about it at all.

Other sports don’t have that level of moral reasoning. Golf should be grateful that it does.

The integrity of the game is just fine, Greg. All the heat Tiger got over messing with it proved that.