Covid-19 rules of golf show that golfers still have integrity

English Lady Professional golfer Rachel Drummond Agnes Nyakio makes a swing at the Magical Kenya Ladies Open Presented by Safari Com's Mpesa at Vipingo Baobab Ridge in Kilifi County on Thursday,05th December,2019.[Maarufu Mohamed,Standard]

Covid-19 rules of golf show that golfers still have some integrity left

The first Safari Tour event of the year started off on Wednesday this week at the par 71 Great Rift Valley Lodge.

Despite being closed for about six months due to the lockdown in Kenya last year, the golf course is in a very good shape.

The resident zebra, waterbuck and impala are probably curious at the return of many human beigns to the well-maintained fairways.

This being the sixth of the ten events before deciding the top Kenyans and regional players who will compete in the Magical Kenya Open that is slated for March 18-21 this year, the referees decided to make a few changes to the Local Rules to conform to what has become the norm on other tours.

Just before competitive golf returned on the European Tour and PGA Tour last year in August, the world governing bodies of golf, The R&A and the USGA, announced some Local Rules that could be adopted to reduce the spread of the dreaded Covid-19.

One of the new Local Rules was the modification of the Rules of Golf to allow golfers fill in their own scorecards and allowing the use of electronic means to submit scores.

The European Tour immediately adopted this Local Rule and players have since been filling their own scorecards.

Starting with the Safari Tour event at the Great Rift Valley Lodge, the golfers are now required to fill their own scorecards and their playing partners are supposed to acknowledge the scores when they all return their cards in the recording area.

The first reaction from some of the golfers playing in the tournament was that this would lead to cheating.

The comments surprised me so much as I always expect golfers to play with integrity. How can someone wilfully put the wrong score on their own scorecard, I wondered.

It goes against the fabric of the game. We as golfers are supposed to call penalties on ourselves even when no one else could possibly have seen our infringement on the Rules.

I reminded the players that under this Local Rule, they are supposed to acknowledge the scores of their playing partners when they are in the recording room.

Slip ups do happen even when a fellow competitor is marking the card but these can always be corrected when all the playing partners are in the recording room.

After the first round on Wednesday, I received a call from one of the players who reported that he had inadvertently put the wrong score on one of the holes.

He had written a four when in actual fact he had played five strokes on the hole. This oversight led to his disqualification.

Knowing that he would be disqualified from the tournament, the player still did the right thing to report his oversight and took the decision on the chin.

Despite all the naysaying, we still haven’t lost all integrity as members of Safari Tour.

We can still trust our golfers to do the right thing.     

Wang’ombe is the General Manager of Kenya Open Golf Limited and Chief Executive Officer of Kenya Golf Union. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Kenya Open Golf Limited or the Kenya Golf Union. [e-mail]