Unexpected rewards for doing what's right in golfBy Larry Dorman
Published: February 11, 2009
PEBBLE BEACH, California: Way down from the top of the leader boards and from the bright sun shining on PGA Tour stars, down below even the exempt players whose names are vaguely familiar, there is a layer of professionals who have no status on the tour. Each year, they fight it out at qualifying school to see if they can regain their standing and get back out where the weekly purses are about $5 million.
J.P. Hayes is one of those golfers, a 43-year-old pro from Appleton, Wisconsin, whose most noticeable statistic from 2008 was missing 11 consecutive cuts. He lost his card and was disqualified from the second stage of Q-school in November for inadvertently playing a prototype golf ball that was not yet on the U.S. Golf Association's approved list.
After the year he had, the only way Hayes could normally have gotten into any A-list event, like the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am this week, would have been by writing letters and calling sponsors, essentially begging for an exemption.
But Hayes, a tour veteran who has earned about $7 million during his career, was invited back to Pebble Beach, and at least four other PGA Tour events this year, because of how he came to be disqualified over the prototype golf ball: He turned himself in.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/11/sports/GOLF.phpThe honour system appears to be working with the sport of golf. Mr. Hayes got the equivalent of a golden ticket when he received unsolicited invitations to play at 2009 events. Congratulations!