Good interview by Dan Patrick with Hayes. Hayes is a credit to the game.

Here is a link to the interview. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/danpatrick/interviews/

If you have an hour, the discussion goes on before the interview – DP’s producer “McLovin’” demonstrates the modern “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’” mindset of a huge number of sports fans today. This link is to the whole hour…

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/danpatrick/listenlive.player.html?file=http://ht.cdn.turner.com/si/danpatrick/audio/2008/11/20/DP_Hr1_11-20-2008_stream.mp3

…I like the article by Busbee. Isn’t it amazing that someone doing the right thing causes such a stir in our society ? I flipped down through some of he comments and I was almost amazed at how many people just don’t get it.

In one of his “Little” books, Harvey Penick talks about Tom Kite and how he called a two shot penalty on himself that eventually cost him a tournament win – and another incident where a player taking a drop from ground under repair didn’t take complete relief, which would have cost him a penalty stroke, and Kite stopped him before he took his swing to make sure he took the correct drop. Again, he lost the tournament by a shot to the guy he helped.

Penick said that golfers at the highest level hate the very THOUGHT of breaking the rules and it pains them to even consider it.

Of course there are stories about Monty in the Philipines and his magical ball placement, where he eventually returned the tournament money, but accepted the Ryder Cup points so he could be on the team – Michelle Wie’s incesant whining about her ignorance of the rules and how SHE shouldn’t be penalized for not knowing them – the situation with Azinger at Q-school where he wiffed on a putt, but didn’t count it and got his card on the number – and the unsubstantiated rumor about Vijay Singh and his ball placement on a green. (there isn’t proof one way or the other) – but 99.99999% of professional golfers hate the idea of breaking rules.

It’s really good to see people talk positively about athletes. It is interesting, like you said, to see such a stir over a C-list guy being honest.

… “you may as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.” I discussed it in a post last night. My thought is that Hayes did exactly what was expected of him, but that’s what makes golf so great.