The great amateur Bobby Jones was once praised for calling a penalty on himself when he felt his ball may have moved slightly in the rough after he had addressed it. “You might as well praise me for not robbing a bank,” he said to reporters afterwards.
Golf is a sport of integrity and individual honesty is assumed and expected. It’s incumbent on all golfers to play according to the Rules and not to gain advantage by breaking them wilfully in any way at all. Incidents of cheating that have been reported, investigated and disciplined over the years are extremely rare at both professional and amateur level. In fact, a search on the internet demonstrates just how few cases have ever made it to a point where action has been taken. With some 70 million golfers on the planet and so few cases of cheating that have resulted in disciplinary action, the logical conclusion would be that cheating is not a problem in amateur golf.
