Open 2009: Golf's twisted morality casts Lyle as villain for telling truth

Published on Saturday 18 July 2009 19:39

BERNARD GALLACHER was on Radio Five Live yesterday, the former Ryder Cup captain yet again cast in the role as defender of the ethics of the game. He was talking about the vexed business of the warring Scots. "Fortunately," said Gallacher, "Sandy Lyle has missed the cut, so he can't put his foot in it anymore. In future, he really needs to think before he opens his mouth. Maybe he'd be better off never talking to the press. He's done a lot of damage. You have to feel sorr

That's what the establishment did last week; they tried to make the world feel sorry for Monty. Monty tried to make the world feel sorry for Monty. Monty is good at that. Has your mind been distracted by Lyle's allegations of cheating, he was asked after missing the cut on Friday. "Oh, very much so, yes," said the Scot. Not his fault he was going home early. Lyle to blame again.

Lyle's great crime was to talk about something that golf has no stomach for. He mentioned cheating in the game and the establishment turned on him. Team Monty went on the attack and they spun this issue into something it wasn't. They wanted you to believe that this was about Lyle's bitterness at being snubbed for the captaincy of the European Ryder Cup team, but it wasn't, not really. Only the game's cheerleaders saw it in such a convenient way.

What this was about was honesty – or the lack of it. Sandy Lyle told the truth. The locker room accepted that he told the truth. But Sandy Lyle is attacked and painted as a fool because golf cannot handle the truth.

Golf's twisted morality, part I:

"Sandy Lyle ought to hang his head in shame"

A year ago at Royal Birkdale, buffeted by the wind, soaked by the rain and demoralised by the dysfunctional state of his game, Sandy Lyle withdrew from the Open championship after 10 holes of his first round. He was 11-over par at the time. He offered no excuse for his decision. No sore wrist, no aching back, no easy way out. He spoke to the media afterwards and just called it as it was; he was fed-up, so he walked.

The truth hurts. In golf it hurts like hell. Lyle said he was "out of whack" with his game and felt there was no point in carrying on. In response, some of the golf press called him "naive". He got pilloried for not having the wit to invent an injury. "Make something up, Sandy. Protect yourself from the flak". That was the gist of the coverage. It seemed that Lyle's biggest problem was not that he gave up but that he admitted giving up. The Daily Mail wrote: "For all the trend of the modern golfer to surround himself with every source of help imaginable, the game can still be boiled down to two unshakeable principles. You do not cheat and you do not quit."

How about a third: you do not tell the truth. We spend our time bemoaning the spin and bullshit of sports managers and publicists and here was somebody who was being honest – and he was buried for it. Too truthful for his own good, that was Sandy. "He trampled all over the responsibilities that go with being a former champion," wrote the Daily Mail. "Sandy Lyle ought to hang his head in shame."

Would we have preferred if he'd told us lies?

Golf's twisted morality, part II:

"Blundering Sandy in a sorry mess"

On Tuesday, Sandy Lyle's honesty outraged the golf establishment one more time. When Lyle referred back to the accusations of cheating levelled against Colin Montgomerie during the now infamous Indonesian Open of 2005 the locker room at Turnberry nodded in agreement. On the putting green at the Open championship they spoke about Lyle's bravery and how he was right to say what he said. But this was under the cloak of anonymity. Their support for Lyle evaporated when you asked them to go on the record. By their silence they allowed Montgomerie to be portrayed as an innocent victim of an unjustified attack. Why? "Because I'm not going to be the one who raises my head above the parapet," said one player. "Look at the shit Sandy's got himself into. Besides..."

"Besides what?"

"Besides, Monty is Ryder Cup captain. It's not good for business slagging him off. There you go, that's a bit of honesty for you."

So golf carries on perpetuating the myth that nobody cheats. On the record, the players say it's pure as the driven snow out there. Off the record, they have their suspicions about certain guys, they have stories they tell, they know the reality but won't talk about it because it's "not good for business". It's a terrible hypocrisy. It's golf's secret shame.

Lyle said on Tuesday that what Montgomerie did in Jakarta would "probably live with him for the rest of his life, it'll be cropping up, I can't do anything against that". How right he was.

You have to see the video to understand why this thing continues to cause such unrest on the tour. Montgomerie is on the fringe of a green-side bunker on the 14th hole in the second round of the Indonesian Open of 2005. The context is everything here. The Scot needs a high finish. A place in the US Open depends on it. But he is struggling. He's on the bubble of the cut. And now he's dumped his ball in a horrid spot and can't get comfortable at address. He tries to take a stance but can't. The bunker is in his way. He goes into the sand and comes out of it. Stands over the ball and backs away. Stands over again and backs away again.

Montgomerie hasn't a clue how to play this shot.

Soren Kjeldsen, the Danish professional, was watching Montgomerie's travails on television in the clubhouse. Gerry Norquist, an Asian tour player, was commentating on events for local television. Neither of them fancied Montgomerie's task.

Monty saw a lightning bolt and walked off the course before playing the shot. He didn't wait for the horn to sound. He was out of there. He marched away and didn't mark his ball.When he came back the next morning the ball was gone. He replaced it. Only now the stance wasn't an issue anymore. He placed his new ball 18 inches from the original spot and the shot was pretty routine all of a sudden.

Is it conceivable that he simply forgot about his problems obtaining a stance the night before?

He got up and down for par and strolled on, perhaps unsure that television cameras were watching him, perhaps oblivious to two fellow professionals aghast at what he had done.

Kjeldsen brought the incident to the attention of the tour and Norquist was right behind him. "Before the weather delay he was in a very difficult position," said Norquist. "The camera was right there, showing he was having difficulty taking a stance because of the bunker. I came back to the course the next day and wanted to see how Monty would finish. When I saw he made par, I thought to myself 'Wow!' Then I saw the replay and I thought 'Holy cow!' I was astonished, because the ball was nowhere near where it was the day before."

Montgomerie was interviewed about it, said he'd made an unintentional error, and was given a rebuke. John Paramor, the European Tour's chief referee, said he would have penalised the Scot two shots had he been on duty. Ken Schofield, the tour's former executive director, said the equitable thing to do would have been to disqualify Montgomerie once the video was studied. His ranking points would have been stripped away. Without those ranking points he would not have qualified for the US Open.

His supporters say now that the matter was dealt with at the time. Not satisfactorily it wasn't. Resentment lingers in the locker room. A huge percentage of his peers remain deeply unhappy about the way Jakarta was handled. When Gary Evans voiced his displeasure about what went down, Guy Kinnings, Montgomerie's manager, called him a lone voice. For four years Kinnings has been trying to kill this thing and he hasn't managed it. Truth be told, he never will.

Despite the help of Team Monty.

Since his comments on Tuesday about Montgomerie's "form of cheating", Lyle has had some amount of insults thrown at him. He's been classed as "blundering" and "hapless", "a bit of a dope" and "a bitter soul", "a sad man" and a "shambles". Team Monty have sought to paint Lyle as a buffoon who didn't know what he was doing when he made the original allegations of cheating and who was too scatter-brained to realise that his "apology" of Tuesday afternoon was like a second dagger into Montgomerie's heart.

Instead of dealing with the message they sorted out the messenger. And it was nasty.

From the Times: "The day after he (Lyle] won the 1985 Open he hosted a party at his house and did the washing up himself. Open champion one day, kitchen skivvy the next. The night before he won the 1988 Masters, a journalist, seeing Lyle's massive golf shoes in the locker room at Augusta, thought it necessary to put a note in them: 'Sandy, this is your left shoe'. On winning the 1988 World Match Play title at Wentworth, when it was sponsored by a Japanese whisky manufacturer, Lyle was heard to say: 'These Chinese may be small but they don't half give big prizes'. Asked what he thought of Tiger Woods, Lyle famously replied: 'I've never played it'."

From the Daily Mail: "If ever the Tournament Players' Committee had any lingering doubts that they were right to disregard Lyle's quest for the Ryder Cup captaincy, they were surely ended with this latest shambolic episode in the life of the former golfing great."

From Bernard Gallacher: "Sandy's spent his whole life being a nice guy and now he's in grave danger of spoiling it. He's certainly spoiling it by saying things like this. People will see this as bitterness at him not getting the (Ryder Cup] captaincy. It's sad because Sandy is a really nice guy and never harboured any hatred for anyone in the past that I've known. He's a bit twisted on this one."

Gallacher is right about one thing; it is sad. Sad that Lyle can raise an issue that cuts to the very soul of the game and be ridiculed for it. Last week one commentator told him to "put a sock in it". That's what you get for telling the truth. You're told to shut up. Golf's twisted morality at work again.