LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Some columns you have no choice but to write, because you wake up every morning and they stare at you until you finally say, "OK, leave me alone, I'll write it."
Last Saturday, golfer Sahith Theegala was hitting out of a bunker on the third hole of the PGA Tour Championship. He was in contention but he felt like, on his backswing, he might've brushed the sand. He wasn't 100% sure. Nobody really noticed. The HD cameras did not catch it.
But Theegala noticed. He immediately told his playing partner, Xander Schauffele. He called a rules official over. They talked. In the end, he called a two-stroke penalty on himself for an infraction only he could see, that he believed he saw. Had he played it off when it happened, nobody notices. He also knew that's not who he is.
"I didn't feel it but I saw something. I thought I saw some sand move right as I took it back," Theegala told NBC after the round. "I wasn't sure but I'd say in the 90% sure and I notified Xander right away and called the rules official over. There was no intent. If anything, I brushed a few grains of sand. But they knew the rule right away. It was a two-shot penalty for changing the lie. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter the intent. ... I would've liked to see clear footage of moving the sand. But I think I moved it. I think I saw it, and we've played a lot of golf, and your intuition as a golfer is very rarely wrong."
Asked about it later, Theegala said had he not called the penalty on himself, "I wouldn't be able to sleep. No matter what the outcome was. ... But I'm pretty sure I breached the rules and I'm paying the price for it and I feel good about it."
The cost to Theegala was $2.5 million, one might say, because those two strokes would've left him in a tie for second. They would've earned him more tour points.
At the same time, golf is such a mental game, who's to say Theegala would have played as well as he did the rest of the tournament without the clear heart and conscience that taking that penalty provided?
And let's be clear, Theegala won $7.5 million for his Tour Championship performance. He did all right. But he didn't' know that would be the outcome when he made the decision to call the rules official over. He didn't know what impact those two strokes were going to have.
Either way, it's the kind of lesson in integrity that you hope everyone can see and feel good about. And it's the opposite of what you see held up in media most days. I saw coverage of this but I kept waiting to read more, outside of the golf press. But I didn't see much.
I saw the TikTok video posted by his girlfriend later, quipping that, after winning $7.5 million, she and Theegala were squeezing onto a commercial flight instead of taking a private plane home.
In an earlier video posted after his third round, his girlfriend, Juju Chan Juianna, said that they talked to a rules official, who told them that had it been brought to their attention afterward and they reviewed it, no penalty likely would have been called because nothing was visible on the video.
"Honestly, we're glad he said something. He did the right thing," she said. "But if he hadn't ... he wouldn't have gotten a two-stroke penalty. Obviousl,y Sahith is a man of integrity."
The whole thing is wonderful and remarkable.
In his new book, "Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values, Good Character, Good Deeds," author Ryan Holiday explores the topic of justice as part of his Stoic Virtue Series.
In a chapter entitled, "Be Your Own Referee," he tells a story about Baseball great Frank Robinson slow-trotting to first base when he thought he had hit a home run over the Green Monster in Fenway Park only to see the ball come up short and bounce back down to the left fielder. He wound up with only a single. Robinson's Baltimore Orioles went on to win the game, and nobody thought much more about it. Except for Robinson.
"A mistake easily forgotten, but one of some ten thousand at-bats in his twenty-one-year career," Holiday writes. "Except that afterward, Robinson walked into the manager's office and slammed down $200 on the man's desk. He was fining himself. He hadn't broken any league rules, but he had given less than his best. More important, he had violated a central tenet of baseball's culture – that you run out every hit – and his failure had cost the team."
In short, Holiday is saying, it's what we do when nobody else notices that matters.
"No one would know but us – but that's who counts, right?" he says. "That's who you have to look at in the mirror at home. . . . We call the penalty on ourselves. We don't accept 'freebies.' We pay our own way. . . . Out of an abundance of caution, we'll flag it. We'll disclose the conflict of interest and recuse ourselves. We'll issue the correction. We'll call the judges over. We'll plunk down the fine even if the coach didn't ask. If we were wrong – or if someone claims to have been wrong – we'll apologize.
"Our lawyers will tell us this is crazy (think of the liability!) Our accountants will be confused. Our fans will be outraged. Our spouses and friends will be puzzled. Our competitors will lick their chops. We may lose because of this – but we won't lose what's important."
For his part, Theegala hasn't tried to make a big deal of the incident. For him, it has been a simple thing — a rule was broken, intentionally or not, and the right thing happened. Justice prevailed. Play the next hole. No big deal.
Theegala was born in California and grew up outside Los Angeles. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from India in the 1980s. His father, who didn't know much about golf, taught him the game.
He also taught him a good bit more. And in a world where negative news always travels faster and farther and sticks around longer, I just wanted his simple act of sportsmanship to stick around a bit longer, too.
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