Scoring at home

Snitchin’, fairness, and honor in golf

[First, some quick background. In the past couple of weeks, two pro golfers have paid dearly for infractions caught by TV cameras. First, Dustin Johnson famously missed out on a playoff at the PGA Championship after a video replay showed him grounding his club in a bunker (two shot penalty). Then, this week, Juli Inkster was DQ’d from an LPGA event because (reportedly) someone watching saw her using an illegal weighted donut to loosen up, and called the LPGA to report the infraction. Then, Ryan at Waggle Room posted this piece on why he’s okay with snitchin’ in golf, and it got me all fired up.]

The point of rules is to make the playing field level for everyone. Some people think this means “getting every call right.” This is the belief of snitchers (outside observers who report rules infractions). The problem with this viewpoint is that “getting every call right” is impossible, as long as people are involved in officiating. And people are involved in 99.9% of officiating in all sports, with the only notable exceptions coming in tennis (Shot Spot/HawkEye). Even video replay is fallible, as people still have to judge what’s on the tape (and the certainty that you feel about what you see doesn’t mean that’s what happened- more often than not just as many people see it the other way. That’s a basic fact of psychology). 

So if you can’t get every call right, then what? The best you can do in any sport to make the playing field level is to put a system of officiating in place that is fair to all competitors. The exact system can look very different for each sport, but the important thing is that it is the same for all competitors in a given event. This is why snitching/video replay is a problem for golf. The current ad hoc system involving snitchers tilts the playing field unfairly, because there are different numbers of “rules officials” watching each participant. While there might be several dozen people watching an early Sunday group (in person only), there can be millions watching the final groups (in person and in HD). In football, replay works for the same for both teams- they don’t turn more cameras on when the Pats’ offense takes the field and turn them off when the Lions’ offense does. 

This is not a luddite approach to officiating. This has nothing to do with HD or TV per se. I’m all for finding solutions that improve the number of correct “calls” being made, no matter the technology (see Shot Spot). The solutions simply have to apply to everybody equally. Replay is fine, as long as there are the same number of cameras on each golfer. So is adding more rules officials- perhaps make it one per golfer, if there is only one per group now. (Sounds like there are a lot of people who’d be interested in the job.) 

Allowing outside observers to be included in the group of officials is inviting disaster. In Ryan’s piece, he talks about how fan input might have overturned some obvious blown calls, had fans been allowed to “call in” (e.g. fans would have overturned Jim Joyce’s blown call in the “perfect” game). I seriously hope this paragraph was a joke, because this represents the slipperiest of slopes. So we’d like to see balls and strikes determined by an internet poll? Or perhaps let Ohio State fans call holding penalties on the Michigan O-line via an 800 number? Maybe NBA refs should check Twitter to see if #ThatWasACharge or #FlopCity is a bigger trending topic. Brilliant. I see no problems with this solution. Oh wait, I meant to say that democratizing officiating is ludicrous.

Finally (and this is what really gets me going) is the discussion of how honor plays into all of this. Golf is a game of honor because each player is responsible for doing what is right. “Getting the call right” is not necessarily the same thing. The reason people praised Bobby Jones for calling a penalty on himself is not that he “got the call right,” it’s that he did the right thing.  Often, in golf, those two things are the same (as was the case for Mr. Jones). But calling a penalty on yourself and calling a TV station to report a penalty are two very different things when it comes to honor. Calling a penalty on yourself is honorable, but calling the TV station is neither honorable nor dishonorable. 

Furthermore, with honor goes trust and respect. You trust your opponent to be honorable and to police himself. If he cheats, then he’s dishonorable. Also, honor and winning are separate (much like how “getting the call right” and “doing the right thing” are separate). You can be honorable in defeat, and dishonorable in victory (and as the Jones tale illustrates, in golf it’s better to be honorable than to win).

So, what does this mean for DJ? Well, I think it means that if he didn’t see an infraction, and his partner didn’t see an infraction, and the rules official didn’t see an infraction, then he should have been allowed to be in the playoff. If he had gone on to win, then people would have had to judge whether or not he acted honorably. But the decision to act honorably should have been his, and his alone. And that’s why I say to golf fans everywhere: Stop snitchin’.