■ Never Up Never In Rule Violation and Choi Woo-yeol’s Sports Morality
Knowing it’s not your ball
Play as if you don’t know until the end of the game
Report it one month after the rumors spread
Out of social responsibility and duty of the player
KLPGA-level ethics training is required
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Recently, a player who had attracted attention as a promising player in Korean women’s professional golf was disciplined and criticized by the public for breaking rules that no one expected, and her golf life is at a critical crossroads. On the fifteenth hole of the first round of the DB Group Korea Women’s Open Championship held in June, this player fell into a violent tee shot and, while she was looking for the ball, someone misunderstood the ball and played it as her own.
Up to this point it can happen to anyone during the round. If you receive 2 penalty throws for playing with a wrong ball and return to the rough to find your ball, or if you do not find your ball within 3 minutes, it is considered a turnover, you receive an additional penalty stroke, and go back to where you fired the last shot and continue playing. The problem was that when he picked up the ball on the green, he knew it wasn’t his ball and kept playing without knowing it. Finally, after about a month, when rumors about him spread out of control, he finally denounced the violation of the rules.
This national team player was gaining popularity by using a long shot, which is rare in Korean women’s golf, with excellent physical condition. In subsequent competitions, she even won her first career victory with overwhelming skill. Why should the best player on an elite course, ignoring the basic rules of golf, commit an unethical act by deceiving golf enthusiasts and even his own conscience?
Research from psychologists has shown that people are more likely to engage in unethical behavior if they are not afraid of being caught by others. For example, according to KORAIL’s announcement, 90,000 people were caught driving illegally in the first half of this year alone. The average number of passengers per day is 494 and most of them are free rides without paying a fare. This is probably due to the fact that there is no ticket office to check whether or not a ticket has been purchased.
The golf course where the game of golf takes place is usually the size of 100 football fields. Because the stadium is so large, golf, unlike other sports, does not have a referee, so it is inevitably exposed to the temptation of cheating. According to a National Golf Foundation survey of weekend general golfers, nearly half (48%) of weekend golfers said they violated the rules during the round. On the PGA Tour, a whopping 44% of golfers said they witnessed a teammate cheating during a round.
Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), an American moral psychologist, considered the cognitive ability to judge good from evil as morality and divided all stages of human moral development into six stages. According to Kohlberg, obeying laws and rules to avoid punishment and receive rewards is the lowest stage 1 or 2 of moral development, usually in infants and elementary school students.
Golf is a sport in which golfers monitor themselves and judge whether or not they violate their rules without a referee. This is the highest of Kohlberg’s six stages, in which conscientious self-selection actions are practiced according to universal moral principles. A representative example is American golf hero Bobby Jones (1902-1971), who voluntarily signaled the slight shaking of the ball during the speech and then gave himself a two-stroke penalty despite opposition from the competition committee, and as a result he missed the championship.
This time, the player who became a problem with breaking the rules thought that everything would be fine until he was caught. It’s because I’ve only worked hard since I was a kid and haven’t had many proper educational opportunities to develop character. Although not at Jones level, at least association-level rules of golf and sports ethics education are needed for the moral development of players to reach the 3rd or 4th stage where they can practice the right on their own. behavior in order to fulfill their basic social responsibilities and duties as a member of society.
Professor at Kookmin University Graduate School of Golf Science and Industry, Ph.D. in Sports Psychology
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