By Chris Gaffney
With the NBA playoffs in full swing, the contrast between golf and basketball couldn't be starker. Golf's culture of self-imposed honesty stands in sharp contrast to the NBA’s mindset, where bending rules and exaggerating contact to draw fouls is often celebrated. Players like potential MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Knicks star Jalen Brunson are dubbed “free-throw merchants,” mastering the art of leaning into defenders to secure calls. In basketball, the focus often shifts to convincing referees of a foul, whether one occurred, embodying the adage, “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain't tryin.’”
As you flip from players flopping to draw fouls to golfers like Justin Thomas and Davis Riley calling penalties on themselves, one of the main differences that makes golf such a unique sport is on full display. It’s impossible for referees to monitor every shot during a tournament; golf relies on players to police themselves across massive properties and maintains a tradition rooted in golf’s origins.
At the RBC Heritage, Thomas was assessed a one-stroke penalty for causing his ball to move. The penalty wasn’t spotted by an eagle-eyed viewer or a referee. Thomas thought he saw his ball move when he was removing a loose impediment, called over an official, and they agreed that his actions would lead to a penalty. Looking at the Rule, Thomas’ ball was in the general area in sand (not in a bunker, but that’s not relevant to the Rule). Thomas was permitted to move loose impediments, as you are anywhere on the course, but he was still responsible for making sure his ball didn’t move when he removed them. He thought he saw the ball move and come to rest in a new position – it didn’t oscillate; it moved. Although the move was minimal, Thomas was penalized one stroke and required to replace his ball and play from the original spot. As golf karma would have it, Thomas ended up in a playoff at the conclusion of the tournament. He would have won outright without the penalty but ultimately won the tournament in the playoff.
There’s another famous situation like this where Riley called a penalty on himself for moving his ball at rest during the final of the 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur against Scottie Scheffler. No one saw the infraction, but Davis self-reported the incident and 12 years later found himself in a similar spot at this month’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson. When he went to use his range finder, a number with slope popped up on the screen. Players are permitted to use range finders on tour now, but they cannot access the slope function. Once he noticed this, he self-reported it to a Rules official and was penalized two strokes for a single breach of Rule 4.3. The slope function was turned off for the round but accidentally got flipped on when he took it out of the case. It’s a tough outcome, and a penalty no one in the field could have ever known about, except for him.
These situations are more common than you would think. At an MGA-administered U.S. Amateur qualifier at Manhattan Woods a few years ago, an accomplished Met Area player had the unfortunate luck of his new caddie turning on the slope function for the start of the round, unbeknownst to him. The caddie breached the Rule multiple times by using the range finder with slope on the first few holes, and even though the player was measuring his yardage with his own conforming range finder, he was responsible for his caddie’s actions. The player realized this was happening early in the round and had the caddie stop when he became aware. When he was able to find a Rules official and self-report at the end of his round, it became clear that the caddie had violated the Rule multiple times. The player was leading the qualifier after the first round and was disqualified after the round because Rule 4.3 was breached twice. The first breach is a two-stroke penalty, the second disqualification.
These situations are a testament to these players’ character but also a reminder of how different golf is. I don’t expect to see Brunson call a travel on himself on a game-winning drive, and, as a Knicks fan, I hope he doesn’t! But I’m not surprised Thomas and Davis called penalties on themselves.
Integrity makes golf unique.