Unfair to call Tiger Woods a Cheat - Travis Kash

Brandel Chamblee has been in the spotlight of golf as of late for remarks he made about Tiger Woods and this past season. In Golf Magazine Chamblee called Tiger Woods a "cheat" and gave him an F grade for this past season because of four incidents that took place over the course of the season. This is a big allegation because not only is calling someone a cheater the ultimate sign of disrespect in golf, but also because the season he is giving Tiger an F for was a season in which Tiger had five wins and also won Player of the Year. If one is not familiar with golf then it would be easy for you to come to the conclusion that four penalties in a year makes him a cheater, but you have to look at the context of each shot to truly understand what happened before you call Tiger a cheater. The first penalty came in Abu Dhabi at the HSBC Golf Championship. Woods missed the cut after he was assessed a two stroke penalty for taking a drop that himself and even his playing partner Martin Kaymer thought was legal. They were unclear about a very specific rule about hazards and vegetation, and that is what caused the penalty. The second penalty came at The Masters. Woods hit a ball that went off the flagstick and into the water, which meant he was supposed to drop from where he took his last shot. Since it is difficult to remember exactly where a shot was once you have moved from it, Woods dropped where him and many others thought was correct and carried on. Woods was assessed a penalty because a television viewer called in and it was found that the drop was 3 to 4 feet behind where it was supposed to be. These two are both penalties that Tiger paid for, and both penalties came about because of a simple misunderstanding of the rules, not because Tiger was trying to cheat. It is very well known that players are not very familiar with the rules. Bubba Watson, a tour competitor, was quoted as saying "I don't know the rules book, so I always call the rules official". The third penalty came at The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass. Woods hit his ball into the water, so he chose to take a drop where the ball first crossed the water. After deliberating with his playing partner Casey Wittenberg, who said “I told him exactly where I thought it crossed, and we all agreed, so he's definitely great on that", they concluded where they saw the ball cross and Tiger dropped from there. Even though there was no official violation, people have come out since and said that it was an illegal drop and Woods should have been penalized. The final two stroke penalty came after Woods moved a twig from behind his ball at the BMW Championship. To the naked eye, it was nearly impossible to see whether or not the twig moved the ball. Once you used super slow motion, however, you could finally see that the ball did move very slightly. Once again this shows that Tiger had no ill intent, and that he was simply a victim of having a highly scrutinizing spotlight on his every room. To call Tiger a cheater is to say that he willfully and purposefully meant to better his score by doing things he knew was illegal, which is not what happened in any of these instances. While it is true that Tiger should know the rules better and not be so quick to make a decision when it comes to drops and other things,that does not make him a cheater.Tiger Woods is very deserving of his Player of the Year award (awarded to him by his own PGA tour peers), and Chamblee was way out of line when he called woods a cheater.