Let’s be honest.
Every lesson I’ve learned in life, I first had to learn on the golf course. Patience: when a rushed warm-up routine results in a poor opening nine. Perseverance: when a bogey train attempts to derail a good round. Gratitude: when I’ve spent four undisturbed hours with loved ones. Humility: when I’ve missed a three-footer for the match. Empathy and compassion: when my opponent does the same.
In that way, I was lucky to start playing young; 30-some years of golf experiences have made me who I am. When I was 15, I learned one of the most important lessons of my life. Now 20 years later, I’m not afraid to say it: I cheated.
I’ve seen a lot of people in glass houses throwing stones at some tour pros for their less-than-exemplary interpretation of the rules over the past few years. I’m one of those critics. Something just doesn’t sit well with me about those guys. I’m no psychologist, but I see a sociopathic look in their eye, the look of someone who is creating their own reality out there. Maybe that’s their greatest strength as competitors. I don’t know; this is complete conjecture. I’ve never met some of the tour pros accused of cheating, but I find myself having the same hope for them that I once had for myself: redemption.
I’m the youngest of three in a highly competitive family. Winning wasn’t everything, but it was the thing. My sister was the most gifted, with both height and athleticism, scoring a college basketball scholarship. My brother was eight years my senior and helped teach me the game of golf. He played for the D3 national champion John Carroll Blue Streaks. We loved to compete in flop shot contests in the backyard. When I finally started to beat him on the big course, he struggled with it like I imagine most older siblings do. Either that or the club toss at Kapalua was actually due to “too much sunscreen.”
Our dad walked on as a D1 collegiate soccer player at the University of Akron, a program that has grown into a national powerhouse. But it’s our mom who gave us the competitive spirit. Entirely self-taught, she started the tennis team at the U of A and has her name on more championships than Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, and Tom Brady combined.
My first love was basketball, but I was undersized. After a particularly memorable run-in with a teenage Lebron James, I started to move more eggs into the golf basket.
The summer after big brother chucked his 5 iron at Mt. Haleakala, I got pretty good. I started to beat a lot of the older kids on my high school team and almost won a few local junior events. I didn’t yet have the game to compete with the best of the best, but I told my parents in the fall of 2000 that I wanted to be a golfer, and they supported me every step of the way.
I signed up for my very first national golf tournament in early 2001. It was at the Golden Horseshoe Golf Club in Williamsburg, Virginia. I wouldn’t have my license until April, so my mom cleared her busy schedule to drive me down for the event.
I used to get really nervous about competitions. I still struggle with nerves today. My response was typically over-preparation, and in this case, it resulted in my first major hand callouses from beating balls in the garage, with my grandpa’s space heater by my side all winter.
I remember arriving for registration at the event and looking around at all the AJGA bag tags and towels emblazed with logos from prior tournaments from states I hadn’t even been to. Each was displayed in clear sight like a badge on a soldier’s formal dress. I felt entirely out of place.
I walked the range and saw picture-perfect, carbon-copy golf swings. I shakingly put down my bag of range balls, and I tried to imagine my grandpa’s space heater right next to me. Some much-needed visual comfort.
The day of the first round, mom could sense my nerves and made me take a stroll with her through colonial Williamsburg after breakfast and before my warm-up. It was a great start.
I teed off, and I was playing rather well: maybe this could be my best round of all time. I arrived at the 15th hole at 4 under par. I had maybe broken par in a handful of summer tournaments to this point. I was playing with a kid who just signed a letter of intent to play at Virginia Tech, and I was beating him by nine shots. You could say it was uncharted territory. I didn’t know it then, but I was in “the zone,” that sweet mental state when the body and mind are entirely in sync. Things were flowing, but it was all about to come crashing down.
The 15th hole was a 600-yard par 5. I pushed my tee shot into the right tree line. We get to the fairway where my playing partners play their second shots and come over with the few parents in attendance to help me look for my ball. After a minute or two of searching, I told the group I would head back to the tee. “Go ahead. We’ll keep looking,” they said, as I left my bag, took my driver, and ran up the hill.
By the time I got back to the tee, the group behind was already on the tee. I cracked a joke, quickly teed up my second tee shot, and hit a healy cut down the middle. What I failed to notice was a parent waving their hands. They had found my original ball.
After a brief meeting with my playing partners, we decided I’d be good to play the original ball because I didn’t put my other ball in play before they found it. I wasn’t familiar with the USGA rule book yet, but our meek interpretation of the rules sounded good to me.
We were all very wrong. Had I stopped to ask a rules official or even talked through with my group for 30 seconds, I think we would have realized that the moment I left the search party, I was declaring the ball lost.
Instead, I said thanks to the dad, who found my ball like he was freaking Santa Claus, and picked up my second drive before heading back into the woods.
There’s already a few lessons in my story. The danger of assumptions and the importance of patience, but those are not the lessons I’m here to share because the moment that matters most is the one that has haunted me ever since. It taught me a lesson I will never forget.
I was playing a fresh Titleist ProV1 with a red three, and this was indeed a fresh Titleist ProV1 with a red three, but staring back up at me was the logo of the event we were playing in. A ball that 180 other competitors were given at registration and not the ball I was playing.
With my playing partners now up by the green and a second group approaching the tee behind us, my inner caddie chimed in: play it … it’s a red Titleist 3, for crying out loud! ... who will ever know?! My true self failing to silence the justifying cries of a scoundrel.
The scoundrel won. I grabbed my 7-iron and punched out from underneath the canopy of trees. As I rushed to the ball, now sitting 210 yards from the green, my internal conversation started to get louder: they found it, dude. What were you supposed to do? You belong here!
I was nearly out of breath when I got to the green, and my once zen-state—being in the zone—was now a loud and disorienting barrel of monkeys. I three-putted from about 30 feet. Ball doesn’t lie, chimed in my sub-conscious. Serves you right, I thought.
As I began to wallow in my mental sabotage on the next tee, my older and more accomplished playing companion looked at me and said, “come on, let’s finish strong.”
I was temporarily soothed by the gesture. I’m sure he could tell I was flustered. I wondered if he had ever played the wrong ball without saying something. Should I tell him? What would he say?
To add a cherry on top of my personal shit storm, I birdied 18 and signed for a 4 under par 68. We took off our hats and shook hands, a tradition I really enjoy and admire in the game of golf. “Great playing,” they both said, “you should be right in the mix tomorrow.”
As we walked up to the clubhouse, my mom was reliving some of my best shots. She was overjoyed. Her son was living out the dream he described in her kitchen only six months prior. It’s one of my greatest golf regrets that I could not fully enjoy that brief moment with her.
The scorer’s table was another new experience for me. Back home, our events usually had a spot where you belted out your nine-hole splits to a staffer at the giant board with their Sharpie pens. This table adorned with sponsor logos on felted cloth, complimentary water, and perforated scorecards felt so important.
“How did you guys do out there?,” the scorer asked. “He shot 4 under,” the older kid said, pointing in my direction. “Awesome, that’s the leader in the clubhouse,” the scorer said. I turned around to see if my mom had heard that. She was out on the patio calling the family at home to share the excitement.
“Did you have any rulings you needed help with today?” We shook our heads no. “What about that provisional ball on 15,” one of the dads said from over our shoulders.
Together we described what happened on 15. The scorer had a few pointed questions before standing up and walking across the room to convene with a man in his 60s standing by the scoreboard. We sat and waited patiently, most of the time with the older kid reassuring me, “don’t worry dude, you declared it a provisional, we found it before you teed off ... all good.” Sure, I thought quietly, but that wasn’t my ball.
Both officials made their way over to the table. The second official asked me to walk him through exactly what happened. At some point, he stopped me: “boys, a provisional ball is called a provisional because it can only be declared if you are on the tee.” “What does that mean?” I asked. “If you did not finish the hole with the second ball you put into play, I’m afraid the penalty is a disqualification.“
I sat in silence while the rules team used the opportunity to educate everyone now, listening about the provisional ball rule and some added notes about the then “five-minute rule.” If the player in question heads back to the tee, they are also declaring that ball abandoned.
I took in all the faces that were now a part of this scene. The older kid has his hand covering his mouth; he was genuinely embarrassed to make a mistake like that himself. The younger kid glanced at me every few seconds, expecting me to go ballistic. The dad who found the ball and raised the question listened intently with folded arms, nodding along. Did he know we did it wrong? Did he intentionally not tell us? Maybe he knew the truth that it wasn’t my ball?
What made it so much worse is that I wasn’t penalized for it, and I still couldn’t get myself to admit it. I was disqualified for something much more forgivable: incompetence. That is what I think really added to my torment all those years ago. People who heard about the ruling would give me their undue sympathy. “That sucks, man,” they’d say. “You were totally robbed.” I tried to buy into that narrative a few times; it even worked for a few brief phone calls, but later that night when my dad said, “you’ll be better because of this,” I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t even believe myself. His son was a cheater.
My mother deserves much credit for what came next. She watched my meltdown in the parking lot like an entitled snot. I never did that before. Maybe I was still performing like I had to now live this lie. Maybe by throwing a tantrum, I’d look like a victim and not a cheater.
I went on another walk that night through Colonial Williamsburg and the campus of William and Mary. Here I was, supposed to be having the time of my life, a life of golf at the highest levels, playing with the best and beating them. I was right there, and I was miserable.
I got back to the hotel room and started packing up my clubs. “What are you doing?,” mom asked.
“Getting ready to leave,” I said.
“I don’t think so. You’re playing golf tomorrow.”
I explained to my mother like she might not understand what the letters “DQ” meant next to my name.
“I understand,” she said calmly, “and I talked to the official before we left, and you’ll be playing in the first group out tomorrow morning at 7:10.”
We argued for a while, but thankfully my mother’s maturity and wisdom won out. I played in the first group out on the golf course the next morning teeing off number 10. I played with a total stud athlete from Connecticut who shot 103 the day prior. “You beat this guy by 35 shots yesterday,” I thought to myself. “But did you really?” my new irritating subconscious would add.
He bounced back with a solid 85 with gargantuan drives I still think about today, mostly playing from different fairways. I shot a non-carded 75, finishing a full three hours before the leaders I thought I’d be playing with before the disqualification.
The eight-hour car ride back to Ohio was a lesson in itself. My mom and I shared laughs from the foot faults and bad player calls she’s seen from her many days on the tennis court. Like her, I took a masterclass that weekend from the greatest of all teachers: failure.
* * *
I’m confident now that my golf life wasn’t destined to pan out the way my 15-year-old self had imagined. I didn’t belong with the ultra-elite players focusing their efforts on the next trophy. The golf world had other plans for me. Maybe I was meant in that first group out, playing quickly, and sharing a few laughs with a guy who shot 103. Perhaps that’s where I was better served in the end.
I love golf, and when I think about why I love it, the outcome never has anything to do with it. I know I’ve made some bad calls on the golf course, but that spot in the right tree line on the 15th of the Golden Horseshoe’s Green Course was the last time I willfully cheated on the game I love.
Sometimes I play it out in my head, where I wave down the group ahead of me, I let them know it’s not actually my ball, we wait while someone waves down a rules official, and we explain the situation before deciding how to proceed. Maybe I make a miraculous bogey and still go on to lead the tournament. Perhaps I make a 10 and leave happy with my first nationally recorded finish.
20 years later, I believe the situation played out as the universe intended. I cheated, dealt with the personal consequences, and I am better for it. I learned that integrity is not something you show when others are watching, it’s telling yourself the truth when no one is.
I now understand what my father said about this experience making me a better person in the long run. I know I’m not alone in that respect: golf has made most golfers better people, simply through the struggles and self-exploration that golf presents. Some lessons we need only to learn once, and some seem to be taught to us over and over again. We’re all better for the experiences golf gives us, good and bad. If we don’t learn the important life lessons on the golf course—where admittedly the stakes are low—perhaps we can avoid having to learn them in our relationships or in our work, losing people, jobs, or even dreams in the process. A disaster on the golf course can prevent a disaster off of it. I love that golf will always be there to teach me more lessons down the road, helping me learn, grow, and find my place in life.