Reprint courtesy of The Sacramento Bee

Sandbaggers are coming under fire

Golfers who cheat on their handicaps in tournaments draw the NCGA's attention and receive suspensions.

By Steve Pajak -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, March 8, 2005

For a sport based on integrity, golf spends a lot of time battling cheaters.

"When somebody plays the round of their life, maybe chipping in twice and making a couple of 30-footers, then loses by five shots, something's wrong (with the system)," Ryan Gregg said.

Gregg has seen his share of less-than-honorable players as the assistant director of rules and competitions for the Northern California Golf Association, the region's governing body for amateur golf.

In 2004, the NCGA did something about it. Using a database of players and scores it began in 2003 and a mathematical probability chart that calculates the odds of players bettering an honest handicap index, the NCGA started reducing handicaps and suspending players.

Suspensions were a drastic step, but the NCGA intended to send a message.

"Shoot one, scare the others, like the handicap director says," Gregg said.

Jim Cowan is the NCGA's director of course rating and handicapping. Suspending players is a bit extreme, he admits, and the NCGA is already considering ending the practice. But something had to be done to keep the competitions fair for players using handicaps.

While most state and regional golf associations offer tournaments only for elite players, the NCGA crowns net champions in several individual and team divisions. The championships are played at Spyglass Hill and Poppy Hills on the Monterey Peninsula and the travel costs subsidized by the players' home clubs, hence the incentive to fudge.

"The majority of the NCGA players fit the profile for the average player - a handicap of 16, 17 on the men's side," Cowan said. "We embrace the idea of offering them championships, even though it comes with some problems."

An honest golfer plays to his handicap once in five rounds. The odds are 1 in 200 a player will better a handicap by three strokes in one round, according to Dean Knuth, the former senior director of the United States Golf Association handicap department and developer of the USGA's course and slope rating system.

The odds are 1 in 570 they will do it by five strokes, 1 in 1,138 by eight strokes and 1 in 82,000 by 10 strokes, Knuth said.

It's when a player shoots three or more shots under a handicap twice in a 12-month period that a red flag is raised in the NCGA's database of 20,000 players.

An automatic handicap reduction is given to the minor transgressors. It takes more than two rounds several shots under a player's handicap or two rounds seven or eight shots under to warrant a suspension, Cowan said.

"In theory, those rounds should be once-in-a-decade type of rounds," Cowan said. "And they did it twice in a year ... in tournaments. If a person always seems to shoot low scores when the stakes are highest, that's when the red lights go off."

About 2 percent of NCGA players have had their handicaps reduced in the last 14 months, Gregg said. The suspensions have totaled 240, the majority of suspended players appealing and about half the appeals granted for reasons deemed legitimate and ranging from inaccurate posting to medical issues.

The Sacramento Golf Club at Haggin Oaks and Wilcox Oaks Golf Club in Red Bluff have been among the hardest hit by the new penalties. Eight of the 12 players on Sacramento's traveling match-play squad were suspended last year, Gregg said. Five Wilcox match-play players were suspended.

Sacramento Golf Club president Ken Dotson said cheating does exist - "There's a degree of it in every club" - but the problem isn't as prevalent. In going after the habitual violators, Dotson said, the NCGA has caught some honest players in its dragnet.

The consequences of suspension are lingering for all.

"The majority feel the suspension is too stiff," he said. "Basically, they say until further review but have never indicated when that further review is to be. In effect, they are suspended indefinitely."

One Sacramento match-play player lost all six of his matches last year yet still received a suspension, Dotson said. "He feels like if he was suspended, the six guys who beat him should be suspended, too."

Most of the appeals by the Sacramento club were rejected, Cowan said.

"I just concentrate more in tournaments. I just really grind. I've been practicing more. I will raise the level of my game to whatever it takes to defeat my opponent," Cowan said of the excuses he hears. "That's someone wanting their cake and eating it, too. Your handicap is supposed to represent your potential ability, not your actual ability. It's their potential they're showing in tournaments that's pegging where their handicap should be."

Wilcox Oaks head pro Bill DeWildt said he loves everything the NCGA is doing pertaining to competitive fairness. But he believes there's a flaw in the system that has unfairly singled out his players.

An inaccurately low course rating - bumped up from 118 to 124 last fall - of the short but challenging course keeps the handicaps of Wilcox players a tick or two higher than they should be, DeWildt said. When Wilcox players compete at other courses, they fare very well.

"I'm absolutely telling you these guys did not inflate their handicaps," said DeWildt, who believes the appeal process will vindicate his private-club members.

It's also a source of pride at Wilcox that its players never touch their ball, globs of mud or otherwise. Those hardy sorts are the types who play all winter, whose handicaps temporarily climb because of the conditions, and who fare well in NCGA match play.

"I have a theory," DeWildt said. "Winners are sandbaggers and losers are losers."

About the writer:

· The Bee's Steve Pajak can be reached at (916) 326-5526 or spajak@sacbee.com.