And I don't mean that just as a golfer (I figure that part goes without saying).
Last week, J.P. was playing in the second stage of Q-School when his caddy handed him a ball from his bag and he hit his first shot. Upon marking the ball on the green, he noticed that it was not the same ball he had played the last hole with. This is a violation of the one-ball rule, which essentially says you play with the same type of ball until you lose it or the round ends. As the rules of golf state, Hayes enforced a two stroke penalty on himself and continued the round. He finished with a 74 for the round; no harm, no foul. He played even better the next day, shooting a 71, which was good enough to advance to the final stage of Q-School. Only Hayes had a problem. He couldn't figure out why he had noticed the ball was different in the first place. So, he went back through his bag and found the culprit: a prototype for a new Titleist that he had been given weeks before that he had mistakenly left in the bag. A prototype that was not approved for PGA Tour use. Hayes called an official, got himself disqualified and cost himself a full ride on next year's PGA Tour.
Golf is a self-policing sport. There are no refs following you around making sure that everything you do is legal. It's up to you to call fouls on yourself when you mess up. That's fine when you and your buddies are messing around on the links and all that is at stake is bragging rights and finding out who's picking up the first round. But when you're staring down the prospect of earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and traveling around to some of the best courses in the world, it's another story entirely. Hayes could have simply kept this to himself, played on and no one would be any the wiser. But he didn't.
Now, Hayes is 43, a two-time PGA Tour winner and has made some money in his time, so he won't be completely screwed here. He'll get into a few tournaments based on those past wins and may even get a couple more sponsor exemptions based on people picking up the story. The honesty he showed is commendable, especially considering that most people probably would have kept it to themselves.
But, if you take no other morals from this story, remember this one: don't take free shit from Titleist.
