■ Never Up-Never In-Rule Violation and Sports Morality of Choi Woo-yeol
I knew it wasn’t my ball
Play like you don’t know until the end of the game
Report it a month following the rumors spread
For the social responsibility and duty of the players
KLPGA level ethics training required
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Recently, a player who had been attracting attention as a promising player in Korean women’s professional golf was disciplined and criticized by public opinion for violating the rules that no one expected, and her golfing life is at a critical crossroads. On the 15th hole of the first round of the DB Group Korea Women’s Open Championships held in June, this player went rough on the tee shot and while looking for her ball, someone misunderstood the ball and played it for her own.
Up to this point, it can happen to anyone during the round. If you get 2 penalty strokes for playing with a wrong ball and go back to the rough to find your ball, or if you do not find your ball within 3 minutes, it is treated as a lost ball, you receive an additional penalty stroke, and return to the point where you shot the last shot and continue playing. The problem was that when he picked up the ball on the green, he knew it was not his ball and continued playing without knowing it. In the end, following a month or so, when rumors regarding him spread out of control, he finally reported the violation of the rules.
This player, from the national team, was gaining popularity by using a long hit, which is rare in Korean women’s golf, with excellent physical condition. In the competitions she followed, she even won her first career victory with her overwhelming prowess. Why would the best player on an elite course, ignoring the basic rules of golf, commit an unethical act of deceiving golf fans and even their own conscience?
Research by 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 riding 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 because there is no ticket gate to check whether or not a ticket has been purchased.
The golf course where the golf game takes place is usually the size of 100 soccer 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 survey conducted by the National Golf Foundation of general weekend 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 had witnessed a teammate cheating during a round.
Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), an American moral psychologist, viewed the cognitive ability to judge right from wrong as morality and divided all stages of human moral development into six stages. According to Kohlberg, obeying laws and rules in order 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 self-monitor and judge whether or not they violate their rules without a referee. This is the highest of the six stages proposed by Kohlberg, in which conscientious actions of self-selection are practiced according to universal moral principles. A representative example is American golf hero Bobby Jones (1902-1971), who voluntarily reported the slight shaking of the ball during address and then gave himself a two-stroke penalty despite the opposition of the competition committee, and as a result missed the championship.
This time, the player who became a problem with the violation of the rules thought that it would be okay as long as he did not get caught. It’s because I’ve only worked hard since I was a kid and didn’t get a lot of proper education opportunities to develop character. Even if not at the level of Jones, at least the association level golf rules and sports ethics education are needed so that the moral development of the players can reach the 3rd or 4th stage where they can practice the right behavior on their own in order to fulfill their basic social responsibilities and duties as a member of society. do.
Professor at Kookmin University Graduate School of Golf Science and Industry, Ph.D. in Sports Psychology
