Can you imagine being fined for \u201clack of effort\u201d?<\/p>\n
Fourth ranked men\u2019s professional tennis player Nikolay Davydenko was fined $2000 for just that after losing a match in his home country of Russia to a player ranked outside the top 100.<\/p>\n
How\u2019s that for the ol\u2019 heave ho\u2026 sigh\u2026 sputter\u2026 can I go home yet? <\/p>\n
Allegations of match-fixing have been flying around for a while in professional tennis, and it\u2019s just now coming to fruition. The organizations are considering an \u201cintegrity unit,\u201d whatever that is. <\/p>\n
How easy would it be to tell if a top ranked golfer was \u201cmailing it in\u201d? And does it even matter? <\/p>\n
I can\u2019t get beyond the \u201cdoes it matter\u201d question. Golf is such a fickle game that a player in the zone one day can play horribly the next. There is a margin these guys play within, and it\u2019s fairly tight, but even the best players in the world will post a round in the high 70s a few times a year. A round which could be accused of lacking effort.<\/p>\n
If the player knows he\u2019s well outside the cut or not in contention on Sunday, some \u201clack of effort\u201d can be presumed. It\u2019s like a nod to the golf gods that he\u2019ll save his best for the next tournament. <\/p>\n
So, does it matter if a player tries his hardest? It might matter to the individual player and his image, but it likely doesn\u2019t matter to the tournament.<\/p>\n
Golf has long been known for it\u2019s emphasis on self-regulation. It\u2019s often said that if you want to teach your kids integrity, have them take up golf. Every round of golf offers the opportunity to cheat and to cheat yourself by giving in by becoming apathetic. What builds character is persevering when your fades are hooking and you\u2019re hitting out of divots. <\/p>\n
However, there\u2019s no direct opponent in stroke play, so throwing a match isn\u2019t possible. Even if a player does \u201ccheck out early,\u201d his impact on the tournament is far less noticeable than when a top ranked tennis player throws a match. And no one at home can tell when a golfer is displaying a \u201clack of effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the many great things about televised golf is that it ignores most golfers (excepting Tiger Woods) when they\u2019re not playing well. It\u2019s tough to pull away from a featured tennis match. <\/p>\n
(Or maybe professional golf needs an integrity committee along with it\u2019s new drug testing policy.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Can you imagine being fined for \u201clack of effort\u201d? Fourth ranked men\u2019s professional tennis player Nikolay Davydenko was fined $2000 for just that after losing a match in his home country of Russia to a player ranked outside the top 100. How\u2019s that for the ol\u2019 heave ho\u2026 sigh\u2026 sputter\u2026 can I go home yet? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,213],"tags":[698,699,700,1163,118],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-golf","tag-atp","tag-effort","tag-fine","tag-golf","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yugflog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}