Hugh McLachlan: Why we trust in golf and not in fouling football cheats

THERE was a noticeable ethical difference between the recent World Cup and the recent Open Championship. The footballers manifestly cheated while the behaviour of the golfers seemed to be exemplary.

Why is there such a difference between both events? Are there lessons to be learned from them about behaviour in public life in general?

Footballers recklessly kick their opponents. They trip them. They impede them by pulling their jerseys, particularly at corner kicks. They claim for corner kicks and throw-ins when they are in no position to know who last touched the ball. They dive and give the impression that they have been fouled, not merely to gain free kicks and penalties but to get their opponents booked. In these, and in other ways, they cheat.

I do not suppose that golfers are better people than footballers. However, I would suggest that people act better when they play golf than they do playing football. They are less likely to cheat. There are people who cheat in their private lives or when they play football who would not contemplate cheating at golf.

From the host of differences between golf and football, I would suggest two that might, to an extent, explain this ethical difference.

Football, unlike golf, is intrinsically a team game. Would Suarez, the Uruguayan forward who cheated Ghana out of a place in the quarter-finals of the World cup by blatantly stopping an otherwise certain goal by handling the ball on the goal line have acted so badly and so shamelessly to further solely his own self-interest? I doubt it.

Golfers are trusted to obey the rules and are expected to obey the rules. The officials do not scrutinise, monitor or judge each particular shot or players. They are there as "referees" in the sense that, if their judgment is required in order to make a ruling on a particular issue, they will be referred to. However, they are not otherwise expected to intervene in the games.

The players are responsible for reporting their own scores and for drawing attention to their own foul strokes if they make any.

In the US Open Championship in 1925, Bobby Jones touched his ball by mistake as he was about to address it. No-one but he would have realised that he had done so and thereby incurred a penalty stroke if he had not immediately made it known. He lost the match by one stroke. When someone - a non-golfer I would imagine - praised him for his sportsmanship, he said that he had not done anything praise-worthy but had merely avoided doing something shameful.

As he put it, we would not praise people for not robbing banks and we should not praise them for refraining from cheating.

Because, I suggest, of the significance of trust and responsibility, the ethos of golf is very different from that of football. A consequence of this is that, if a player had been seen to cheat at the Open Championship as footballers were seen to do in the World Cup, he would have been reviled by fans and fellow-players alike. That alone, even without the wrath and punishment of the golfing authorities, would have ended his professional career.

Trust is crucial in public life generally, not merely in sport. When people are given trust, they often consequently act in such a way that trust is merited. Trust can breed trust. Lack of trust is corrosive. We should be prepared to trust people. We should strive to be and to deserve to be trusted.

Hugh McLachlan is a professor of applied philosophy in the School of Law and Social Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University