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At the risk of sounding puritanical and polarizing, I believe gambling is a sin. You might bristle at that word. It might enrage you. But, Las Vegas doesn’t embrace the nickname Sin City because of their Cirque du Soleil shows and Beatles tributes. And the government levy on gambling, like those on cigarettes and alcohol, is commonly referred to as a “sin tax” for a reason.
Like every other activity that falls into the lurid category, gambling isn’t something people run home and brag about to friends and family. You might shout from the rooftops about a winning lottery ticket or call home with the exciting news that you hit a jackpot at a quarter slot machine. But if you drop a hundred at a blackjack table, are you eager to tell your wife? If your parents or grandparents are still alive, do you really want them to know how much time, energy and money you’ve gambled away?
We also regard gambling as a sin by the way we manipulate language to justify it. It’s “gaming” like Monopoly or chess, a fun and frivolous pastime that brings lots of smiles and pats on the back – just look at the Harrah’s ads if you don’t believe it. And it is, indeed, all fun and games, right up to the moment a car gets repossessed. Or a woman gets hit. Or children see their father broken and ashamed. Then it’s not a lot of fun anymore.
I’ve sat with those families. I’ve talked to those men who couldn’t look up from the floor. I can tell you, it’s not a game.
According to 2016 statistics from the North American Foundation for Gambling Addiction, approximately 10 million Americans were struggling with some type of gambling issue. The results of those problems range from financial distress and marital problems to crimes like theft or the sale of illegal substances. At its extreme, gambling can lead to violence and, sometimes, suicide.
In the most recent peer-reviewed studies, almost 90 percent of compulsive gamblers admit to having engaged in some form of crime related to their gambling: 63 percent admit to writing bad checks; 30 percent admit to stealing from work; 57 percent say they have stolen from friends or family members.
In the United States, for all crimes, gamblers are arrested seven times more frequently than non-gamblers.
Meanwhile, the global market size for casino and online gambling is 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars.
... almost 90 percent of compulsive gamblers admit to having engaged in some form of crime related to their gambling ...
Which brings us to golf.
On April 14 of this year, the PGA Tour and DraftKings announced plans to open an onsite sports book at the TPC Scottsdale, home to the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Already the most-attended (and rowdiest) golf event on the American calendar, the tournament attracts thousands of young people from nearby Arizona State University for a desert beer party with a little golf thrown in. Now they’re adding gambling windows. What could possibly go wrong?
This is just one part of a large and aggressive campaign to move professional golf into betting. Officials make no bones about the reasons. “We think gaming leads to more engagement,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said early in the process, using the same euphemistic language you might attach to Trivial Pursuit and Hungry Hungry Hippos.
It also leads to top-line revenue increases. Potentially big ones.
Not long after those initial comments, the tour inked deals with IMG Arenas and DraftKings.
Now, with the freight train running at full steam, the question is: what does this mean for the game?
A hint came via e-mail just a few hours before the first shots were struck in Augusta. The subject line of the e-mail said, in all-caps, “HERE ARE 56 COOL MASTERS PROP BETS.” This was followed by an invitation to visit an Australian website and bet on everything from the highest and lowest scores of the day (not who would shoot them, but the actual numbers), to the biggest front-to-back-nine differential, the biggest “blowup holes,” and whether or not the flagstick would be left in for the final putt.
No, really, you could actually wager on whether or not Hideki Matsuyama left the flagstick in on the 72nd hole.
Does anyone think any of this is good for the game?
And how about the people who engage in it? I’m sure all the betting sites in Australia and elsewhere require users to vow that they are of legal gambling age. But who is checking IDs at the virtual door?
Golf and gambling have always been linked, going back as far as the days when players built their own tees out of tiny mounds of sand. Look back 100 years in newspaper archives and you’ll find that players such as Harry Vardon, Ted Ray, Willie Park and Walter Hagen rarely took a practice swing without something on the line. Challenge matches were as common as horse races back in the day. But is that what we want for golf in the 21st century? Do we really want the game’s new fan base to be the virtual equivalent of the old track junkies, the nicotine and pencil-lead stains on their fingers replaced by computer vision syndrome?
As uncomfortable as it might be, these are discussions worth having.
Of course, golfers are going to wager. Nobody thinks a $2 Nassau on Saturday morning is the road to perdition. But what do you call 56 Masters prop bets you can place on the spot with a credit card and a cellphone?
If you’re honest, you know the answer. You call it a sin.
E-Mail Steve