George Ferguson Column: Everyday hackers like us calling Tiger a cheater is laughable

I love the game of golf. I love all of life's lessons I can learn from it. But instead of the Master's teaching us all about the type of perseverance and fortitude it takes to win, like Adam Scott displayed on Sunday, instead, it showed that all of America is on moral golf high ground when it comes to integrity and rules of one of the greatest games there is.

So, before I go any further, I'm just going to get right to the point. Tiger Woods does not cheat at the game of golf. He didn't cheat with his illegal drop on Friday and he hasn't won 75 PGA Tour events and 14 major championships by cheating or by disgracing the integrity of the game – an integrity which I feel is way too antiquated by the way.

George Ferguson

Sports Editor

And if you think Tiger Woods cheats on the golf course, or if you thought his illegal drop on No. 15 last Friday in the second round of the Master's was a direct act of cheating, then you simply don't understand golf or the way the rules are interpreted or enforced.

First and foremost, professional golfers, whether it's Tiger Woods or any other PGA Tour professional, or even anyone who has ascended to a level of playing golf for a living, don't cheat. They don't need to cheat. They don't need to walk off into the woods to find their ball and drop another one when they can't. They don't need to improve their lie when no one is looking and they don't need to count fewer strokes than they actually got on their scorecard. And they don't take mulligans — EVER!.

Now, ask yourself how many times you've done any of the above on the golf course, and then come back and tell me about the integrity of the sport. And in golf, we all are supposed to uphold the integrity of the sport. Not just the men and women who get paid to play it. That's what makes golf unique and special.

No, Tiger certainly did not cheat. He didn't cheat with his drop and he didn't cheat the game by staying in the tournament. What he did was commit a rules infraction, which anybody involved in professional golf will tell you happens at every PGA Tour event during every week of the season. This just happened to be Tiger, and since half of the country truly seems to hate him, it's blown up into one of the biggest golfing controversies since, well, since the last Tiger controversy.

Now, it's mind boggling to me that Tiger didn't know the rule, or for that matter, that a veteran caddy like Joe Lacava wouldn't have known the rule either. It always astonishes me when professional golfers don't know the rules, but it happens every single week on tour, and it happens to the best golfers in the world. Still, being an idiot and not knowing the rules of the game doesn't make you a cheater. It's been that way in golf for a century, and in professional golf, there's a reason there are rules officials assigned to every single grouping on every single tour stop around the world. It's because even the greatest players in the game don't know, and don't understand all the rules.

And as for the outcry for Tiger to disqualify himself after signing what was an incorrect scorecard, I ask…why should he? There is a new rule on the PGA and European Tour which clearly states that if a player is penalized for something post-round and after he's turned in his scorecard, he is, at least, absolved of knowingly signing an incorrect scorecard. That's exactly what happened to Woods and he was not DQ'd by the Master's and neither would any other player in the field have been if they had fallen under the same statute.

To ask Tiger to take himself out of the tournament for the integrity of the sport was not only ridiculous, but was also just as ignorant a line of thinking as Tiger was for not knowing the drop rule in the first place.

In the end, the negativity coming towards Woods' penalty and the after-math of Friday was pretty transparent. There are a lot of people who simply don't like Tiger Woods and you love to see him fail. Well, guess what, he stayed in the tournament, per the rules of golf, and he still failed because he didn't win the tournament.

So in the end, all of you got what you wanted anyway. Tiger left the Master's without his fifth green jacket. So maybe it's time to let this one go.

And as far as golf's moral high ground, people can come down from that too, at least until Tiger tees it up again at the U.S. Open. Tiger did indeed break a rule. But he didn't cheat. He, like every other great golfer on this planet, doesn't have to cheat. They can get pars and birdies often enough without cheating.

No, there was no cheating at the Master's. Golf's integrity, as far as I'm concerned, is still intact. Next time you're on the golf course, play all 18 holes and make sure you can say the same before throwing any more stones.