published: Friday, November 21, 2008

When doing the right thing doesn't pay off

By DAN HOEHNE

daniel.hoehne@newssun.com

J.P. Hayes is an honorable man, and it's going to cost him.

The professional golfer won't be a professional next year, as by doing the right thing he won't be on the professional tour.

A mid-level golfer on the PGA circuit, Hayes doesn't have the luxury of an exemption and had to work to qualify for the golden ticket of a tour card.

At Q School seeking to earn his card for the '09 PGA season, Hayes apparently received the wrong ball from his caddy and played it for a shot on a par-3 hole.

Realizing he had violated the rule of only using one ball, unless it's lost of course, Hayes made it known to an official who then informed him it would be a two-stroke penalty.

While the extra two strokes certainly didn't help him, it didn't end his chances of earning his tour card - that came later.

At home later, Hayes realized that the ball he had mistakenly hit was not only the wrong ball at the time, but was the very wrong ball altogether.

It seems he was testing out a prototype for a manufacturer and it had gotten mixed in among the others in his bag.

He then got in touch with officials to inform them of this mistake upon his mistake.

Sticking with the rules, he was disqualified - thus negating his chance to be a full member of the PGA Tour this coming season.

There are so many interesting angles to this story, I almost don't know where to begin.

Just the stringent standard Hayes held himself to is striking.

Golf is the only sport where the players are generally left to police themselves - so I guess those who have it as a part of their life for so long have this mentality firmly ingrained.

And yet, you'd still think human nature would kick in at some point.

He's back home after taking the two-stroke penalty and it could have been over right there.

Nobody other than him, and perhaps his caddy, would have any knowledge that the ball he had hit was one that was against the rules to have used.

But just the fact that he knew, and knew it was wrong, drove him to make it known to officials - whatever the consequences.

Hayes himself cites the fact that he has made more than $7 million over his career, so it's not as if he'll be struggling to feed his family - unlike some pro athletes that find it hard to do so on a $14 million, per-year paycheck.

And he will be able to get sponsors exemptions to play in some PGA events, and could play in smaller tournaments during the year if he so chooses.

So he's not suggesting we should feel bad for him, and overall, we shouldn't.

Even if we can see, through this, that some of those PGA rules are perhaps a bit too nit-picky.

While players in other sports, with their agents, whine and moan about more and more money, and will do whatever they can in order to get more and more money - including tanking it until your team finally has had enough and let's you go to a team that likely will sign you to big bucks and you suddenly light it up for a couple months.

I guess it's just refreshing to hear about someone in professional sports that did the right thing.

Though maybe it also makes many of us feel a little worse in knowing that, in that situation, we might not have.

Dan Hoehne is the Sports Editor of the News-Sun. He can be reached at daniel.hoehne@newssun.com.