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Rumours on cheater

chriso97

chriso97

Mad Golfer
Joined
Dec 21, 2017
Messages
595
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6
Location
Perth, Western Australia
Handicap
4.6
There's a certain player at my club with a reputation for cheating. Has got himself down to a real low official handicap
People are saying he's been moving his ball (foot wedge) and "finding" the unfindable with a good lie.

Spoke to a younger guy who played with him and he was not 100 percent but fairly convinced he saw a few things.

What would you do?
Play your own game and ignore? Or watch like a hawk? (potentially ruining your own focus)

This is comp golf at a private club


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Are you asking about competitive rounds in tournaments (heck yes I watch him) or regular rounds (whatever, he’s only hurting himself)?
 
Seems like he's already screwed himself, assuming you play a lot of net score events, which is when his now low handicap will come into play. Curious as to what these "other people" have done who says he's been using a foot wedge and magic act on errant balls. Rumors are tough. If they say they saw him cheating and did nothing. Why not?

The more common form of cheating is the opposite. The player with the inflated handicap who is always beating their HC by several strokes in a tournament. We've got one guy who's been doing that and who is now in the cross-hairs of our tournament director. Their cheating occurs outside the tournaments, so most of the time you have to rely on the USGA's probability charts. In this case, the guy made the mistake of telling another player and me that he played well because of playing multiple rounds 2-3 weeks prior in Hawaii where the winds were a challenge. His official handicap showed no scores recorded during that time, Hawaii or anywhere else. In fact, he only posted 5 or 6 scores in the prior six months. That was all the tournament director needed to hear.
 
If its competitive, I'd watch him closely. Don't let cheaters get away.
 
chriso97 said:
There's a certain player at my club with a reputation for cheating. Has got himself down to a real low official handicap
People are saying he's been moving his ball (foot wedge) and "finding" the unfindable with a good lie.

Spoke to a younger guy who played with him and he was not 100 percent but fairly convinced he saw a few things.

What would you do?
Play your own game and ignore? Or watch like a hawk? (potentially ruining your own focus)

This is comp golf at a private club
Click to expand...

The big games at my club take cheating very seriously and drop golfers who refuse to play by the rules, alienating them any ability to join their group.

For tournament play, the only thing you can do is make sure people are reporting him when they see it. Most clubs build a case and act on it. We had a guy who regularly took a towel with him in the heather grass and would hide an extra golf ball inside the towel, magically finding his lost ball after a brief search. After a few reports, and multiple warnings, he has since been blocked from any tournaments at the club.

I don't personally get into money games, but I also don't associate myself with cheaters. Move your ball or magically finding it when you're creating your handicap? Whatever, doesn't impact me. Do it when we play in a match against each other? Good luck getting another invite from me.
 
I'm with you all. I just hate getting caught up in the watching other people closely stuff. Really screws with my game.

I don't know why you'd bother. Like you said you are only hurting yourself if you get yourself a handicap you can't play to



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Me personally,i reserve judgement until I see it with my own two eyes. And if i do see it, i absolutely call him out on it.
 
Interesting, I've heard of guys "cheating" to grow their handicap upwards but not many times when guys are trying to get their handicaps lower. Most club guys that play in the MGA, tournaments, etc. want their strokes. So few guys at the club I was at use to discard good rounds and not post 'em up to the handicap system. So you had guys with 15 handicaps shooting 79's and 80's and winning everything.
 
chriso97 said:
I'm with you all. I just hate getting caught up in the watching other people closely stuff. Really screws with my game.

I don't know why you'd bother. Like you said you are only hurting yourself if you get yourself a handicap you can't play to



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Click to expand...

If he is cheating during competition, then it doesn't matter how low his handicap is going, he is still effecting the field at some level.
 
Nate said:
Interesting, I've heard of guys "cheating" to grow their handicap upwards but not many times when guys are trying to get their handicaps lower. Most club guys that play in the MGA, tournaments, etc. want their strokes. So few guys at the club I was at use to discard good rounds and not post 'em up to the handicap system. So you had guys with 15 handicaps shooting 79's and 80's and winning everything.
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There are 2 types of cheaters I have seen: Sand baggers (who are as you mention, trying to get as many strokes as they can for tournaments) and vanity cappers. Vanity cappers like to say they play to a certain number, when in reality they are much higher. These are the guys that pick up and say they had a 5 (max would be more than that), or only post their good rounds.

And I have always thought that vanity cappers are only hurting themselves, but as was pointed out to me recently, if you aren't really counting your strokes accurately in "casual" rounds how likely are you to play the same way in competitive rounds? And as the original OP pointed out, in a competitive round how much focus are you putting on your playing partners that you couldn't miss something in a round?

We have something like this at our club, not sure what is more detrimental, the cheating or the rumors about cheating. As Canadan mentioned, if you see something it needs to be reported immediately. We have a player who has had 3 instances pop up, 1 in casual rounds, 2 in tournament rounds but nothing was said until much later on. Now the player who is the focus of these rumors feels he is the victim of a witch hunt, when it is possible that nothing untoward occurred, or he has been cheating but no one called him on it....
 
chriso97 said:
There's a certain player at my club with a reputation for cheating. Has got himself down to a real low official handicap
People are saying he's been moving his ball (foot wedge) and "finding" the unfindable with a good lie.

Spoke to a younger guy who played with him and he was not 100 percent but fairly convinced he saw a few things.

What would you do?
Play your own game and ignore? Or watch like a hawk? (potentially ruining your own focus)

This is comp golf at a private club
Sent from my Lenovo P2a42 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I would play my own game but not ignore.

It might give me a little more incentive to help him/her find a lost ball if required, but I don't want it to take away from my enjoyment of the game and my focus on the competition.
 
I honestly don’t know how he would get away with cheating in a club tournament, especially with his reputation. If someone like that was at my club I’d be happy to play a round with him and watch him like a hawk.

I’m surprised that someone would be stupid enough to want a vanity handicap, especially if he’s near scratch. Every club where I’ve been a member, the low single digit to plus index players tend to seek one another out and play together. In fact every club I’ve been at has had a scratch league that goes for 10-14 consecutive weeks where you play 6 or 8 of your best players against other clubs in the area, normally with no handicaps. IMO, it’s super easy after a couple rounds to determine if someone’s index is legit. If someone is near scratch they likely played hundreds or thousands of competitive rounds growing up with other “players” and know what a scratch player’s game looks like. I have seen quite a few vanity handicaps in the 5-10 range but in the last 30 years I only remember two guys with a vanity handicap under a 4.0. Sandbaggers with a low index, yes, plenty of times, there were a couple at my last club. If your index is that low your playing in the Championship flight and most of your competitive golf growing up was never played with handicaps. The two college players I currently know don’t even really track or care about their index and both record less than 20% of their rounds. Why would they care when their index is never a factor for any of their golf? Other than small money games with my regular golf buddies/members at my club, my index has only been used for maybe for 15 rounds in my 3500+ rounds played since I started 40 years ago. A vanity index is only going to lose you money in any friendly games at your club or anywhere else you play and alienate you from other members because you’re a lousy partner.
 
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We used to have a Seniors captain who was famous for his excellent use of the leather wedge. He was in the pro shop and asked if he could try on some new FootJoys.Certainly ,sir, said the pro, what loft would you like?

He was kicked out soon after, and was black balled in a number of clubs.

These guys always get caught.
 
Canadan said:
The big games at my club take cheating very seriously and drop golfers who refuse to play by the rules, alienating them any ability to join their group.

For tournament play, the only thing you can do is make sure people are reporting him when they see it. Most clubs build a case and act on it. We had a guy who regularly took a towel with him in the heather grass and would hide an extra golf ball inside the towel, magically finding his lost ball after a brief search. After a few reports, and multiple warnings, he has since been blocked from any tournaments at the club.

I don't personally get into money games, but I also don't associate myself with cheaters. Move your ball or magically finding it when you're creating your handicap? Whatever, doesn't impact me. Do it when we play in a match against each other? Good luck getting another invite from me.
Click to expand...

You couldn't give me enough strokes
 
In competition, I would definitely pay close attention to his actions.
 
I try not to judge anyone based on rumors. I'd mind my own business unless I see it.
 
Cheating to lower your handicap is probably the dumbest thing I can think of.
 
tahoebum said:
IMO, it’s super easy after a couple rounds to determine if someone’s index is legit. If someone is near scratch they likely played hundreds or thousands of competitive rounds growing up with other “players” and know what a scratch player’s game looks like.
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Generally, agree. Just want to point out there are a few of us late bloomers with this game. I know in my case, I didn't play competitively (in golf) until about 10 years ago and did not play to my potential most of that first year.
 
chriso97 said:
There's a certain player at my club with a reputation for cheating. Has got himself down to a real low official handicap
People are saying he's been moving his ball (foot wedge) and "finding" the unfindable with a good lie.

Spoke to a younger guy who played with him and he was not 100 percent but fairly convinced he saw a few things.

What would you do?
Play your own game and ignore? Or watch like a hawk? (potentially ruining your own focus)

This is comp golf at a private club


Sent from my Lenovo P2a42 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

This is a no brainer. Play him for a lot of $ at his new "low" handicap and just make you're near anytime there something questionable could come up. Don't hawk over him like a rules official but be present enough that he would have to be really brazen to try and cheat. A few rounds of you relieving him of all the $ he brought to the course trying to play to his new handicap should teach him a good lesson
 
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