New Note:

At lot of people play golf. Most of them cheat. In this piece we will take a look at several varieties of golf cheating, taking as examples my maternal grandfather Bill Kolb and my aunt’s second husband Jerry.

My grandfather played golf for the entire time I knew him. Besides his family, golf was probably his passion. Bill was a so-so golfer at best. He could hit the ball pretty straight but never more than about 150 yards. His short game was better than his long game, and he liked to say “I just need to get it on the dance floor” (by which he meant the green.) Bill’s lack of distance played into an incident once where we were backed up behind a slower group who was messing about around the green. We were about 230 yards out, and I was planning on hitting a 5 wood approach. Bill told me to go ahead and hit, and I said I needed to wait because I might “get it there.” Bill said there was no way, and if I did he’d buy me a new pair of golf shoes. So I took out my 5 wood and smashed it right up into the group. Bill, to his credit, said “I’ll be darned,” and sure enough bought me a brand new pair of white golf shoes the next day that I kept for years. Bill’s power, naturally, receded even more as he got older, however his overall game stayed about the same. I’d guess that on your average U.S. public course his actual score would have been in the low 100s, give or take.

Now any golfer knows that a score in the low 100s, while certainly not great, is where a lot of golfers will land if they were to play every shot clean. However, very few golfers play every shot clean. Here is a non-comprehensive list of how golfers trim strokes off their total score. Some of these methods are outright cheating, while others may be agreed upon among the players before hand.

1. “Improving one’s lie.” This is a very common method of cheating that involves subtly, or not so subtly, adjusting the ball to a better lie (position) on the ground. This may include shifting the ball from wet grass to drier grass, nudging the ball out from behind a tree, moving the ball a few feet from an out-of-bounds position to an in-bounds one, pulling the ball out of shallow water onto dry land, and many other moves. In golf, a lie adjustment of just a few inches can sometimes make a huge difference, and can often be accomplished without another player seeing.

2. Flat out shaving strokes off your reported score. This rather brazen method is also quite common and simply involves lying about how many shots you hit. Players basically never do this when they played a good hole, for example a player will almost never claim to have scored a 4 on a par 4 when they actually scored a 5. This is because a 5, for an amateur player, is still a fine score. However, when a player scores let’s say an 8 (“a snowman”), or a 10 or 11 (“sticks”), the reported score may drop a few. Group mates usually know or suspect that cheating is happening, however if another player took 11 strokes this means they hit a bunch of grounders or something and it can be hard to keep track of everyone’s shots. In my experience, a cheating player may be asked “really, you scored a 7 there huh?” and may come back with “yeah 7 for me,” or the classic “oh yeah, I forgot one. It was an 8.” Basically everyone knows the cheating player is BSing, and sometimes a fellow player will call him or her on it. “That wasn’t a 7, come on dude.” But most of the time, especially if the game is not for money, people will let a few strokes here or there slide.

3. Shaving strokes by pretending certain swings were “practice.” This is most commonly seen when a player has landed in a sand trap (or “bunker”) and has taken 3 or 4 strokes to get out of there. Sand traps are great for cheating because many of them are sunk several feet into the ground, and it is often difficult for other players to tell what’s going on down there. Therefore, a player who hits a few balls into the wall of the sand trap in front of him can just fall back on the “those were just practice swings” move. If another player saw the swings, well the ball didn’t really move and it can be hard to tell. This move only really works in sand traps through because otherwise it becomes too overt.

4. Hitting the ball back in bounds from out of bounds. This is a move that I myself have pulled off many a time. I don’t respect out of bounds markers. Now, I understand that it’s not great to be crossing a busy road to get to a wayward drive and then hitting the ball back across said road. However, such thoroughfares aside I feel like a golfer should be able to chose to play any ball she can find. Nonetheless, although it is morally acceptable, this move is also technically cheating as you are supposed to take a penalty stroke or two.

5. Dropping a new ball on the ground when unable to find a lost ball. This is another very common move famously depicted in the James Bond movie Goldfinger and also I think a favorite of the Trumpster. In fact, that Trump probably stole this move from Goldfinger. A player pulls out this move when her drive or long iron has gone into the long grass or trees and after poking around, cannot be found. Here, the player will have a ball at the ready in a pocket and just casually drop the ball in a decent lie while calling out “I found it.” This move works well, and I recommend it to the golf cheater who wants to build a little subtlety into their repertoire.

6. Taking a “gimme.” A “gimme” is a shortish putt that instead of putting out the player just picks up and “counts.” Now I think this is actually against the spirit of golf in many ways because any golfer knows short putts are far from easy. In fact, short putts are fucking difficult. A two or three foot putt that a lot of players may take as gimmies are anything but, and can be extremely nerve-racking. A gimme player may shave 3–6 strokes easy over the course of a round from gimmes along. Gimme players suck, but they are everywhere, and many foursomes will just allow gimme play in the interest of speeding up the game and lowering scores. If a group is going to be a gimme group, they should really establish what this means. For example, a lot of putters have a leather grip of between one to two feet or so, and some people will play “gimmes inside the leather.” Putts inside the leather are still totally missable, however at least this is a standard. There is nothing worse than some dude looking at a 5 foot putt and just saying “I’m taking that.” Yeah, you’re taking it cause you’re missing it brother.

7. Taking a mulligan. This is only borderline cheating because it can only really be done by mutual agreement. A mulligan is when a golfer drives the ball into the water or the woods and just takes a do over. Some groups will give every player one mulligan per nine holes. I don’t really mind mulligan play, although it can reduce a total score by about 5. Mulligans are cheating, but they are civilized cheating.

8. Playing to one’s “handicap.” This is the most bizarre method of cheating, which I will explain a little later through the lens of my aunt’s second husband Jerry.

So my grandfather Bill Kolb, as you will already have ascertained, cheated at golf. He cheated at golf so religiously in fact that it was mentioned in his eulogy. Bill favored method #2 above. He might have taken a gimmie here and there, and maybe improved his lie a bit, but his go-to was just to cap his score on any given hole at 7. So if he scored a 7, he’d report a 7. If he scored a snowman, that’d be a 7 too. Sticks? Another 7. For a so-so player, capping scores at 7 is not a bad play, however it sometimes looks ridiculous. The 8>7 move is one thing, but if a player takes double digits to get the ball in the cup, his group mates are going to be aware. Bill’s devotion to the 7 cap though was tough to crack because he was absolutely consistent with it and it happened so often that one’s ability to resist was worn down and wilted. Through his 7 cap and a few other measures, Bill would usually be able to shave several strokes off his score and report in the 90s, a much more respectable outcome than low 100s. Everyone knew this, but no one could or wanted to do anything about it. He was the patriarch, he was beloved, and his cheating at golf over time became part of the reason people loved him.

My aunt’s second husband Jerry though is another matter. He favored cheating method #8, which is the most egregious and infuriating by a long shot. The dude would “play to his handicap” by playing every shot straight and scoring what he scored on each hole. Then, let’s say he made a 95 overall, we would say “hey there Jerry, 95 today?” and he’d say, “nope, 84. I played to my handicap.” What did this mean? It meant that he had recorded somewhere in a database or something that his handicap, or average score, was 84. This handicap was the purported result of an aggregated average of his rounds from some earlier point in time. Now, everyone on earth understands that just because you shot an once 84 five years ago you are not guaranteed to shoot an 84 today, or ever again actually. Dr. J used to be able to soar in the air and pull off 360 dunks, and today he can barely edge the ball over the rim. Time is a bitch, and in any case you can’t just claim an 84 because of some number in a database. It’s completely absurd. However, this was his move, every time.

I would play with Jerry and my dad and bothers, and because I have a big mouth sometimes, I would push back on his 84. “Hey man, you didn’t actually take an 84 though, you took a 95. So how is it that you got an 84.” “That’s my handicap,” he’d say, “I can’t score over my handicap.” What? Can’t score over my handicap? Yeah buddy, that’s like saying I can’t weigh over 164 pounds because I weighed that once. That’s absurd. But it didn’t matter. Dude was taking the 84 regardless. After all, he made one once.

The “play to my handicap” move bears no resemblance to how professional golfers deal with their handicap of course, nor does it track with any other sport in the world to my knowledge. No basketball player after a tough loss says, “now actually we didn’t lose because although the final score had us down by 6 my scoring average is 32 and although I only scored 17 tonight, I get +15 because it’s my average so we win by 9.” That player would rightly be seen as insane. No figure skater says, “well I fell twice tonight, but I usually don’t fall, so my score goes up by 1.2” or whatever. Golfers are full of it, I guess, and can get away with this kind of nonsense around their handicap.

Looking back, although I found both methods of cheating, the 7 cap and the play to my handicap move, annoying at the time the first remains far more forgivable than the second. The 7 cap is relatable — no one wants to see those high numbers on their card, and when done with a little joie de vivre comes across as very human. The handicap move is still pretty aggravating though. It’s like the handicap player is playing some kind of intellectual game, like they think they are smarter than you or something. Jerry is not a bad golfer per se, but he’s a 95 not an 84, and just needs to deal with it.

Dedication: For Bill Kolb, a great man but a mediocre golfer.