Good Sportsmanship

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A tale of niceness for a change :)

I played a club singles matchplay tie recently, and to save having too much waiting around both of our regular partners joined us to make up a 4 ball.

The 4 of us are all mates anyway, but obviously my partner was rooting for me and the same for my opponents partner rooting for him.

It was a close match all the way, and we were all square after 17.

On 18 I hit my tee shot left and it was touch and go whether or not it would clear a water hazard, so I played a provisional, but with my opponent in the fairway there wasn't much hope of avoiding losing the match if I had to use it.

I got to where my ball would have been if it cleared the hazard and started searching. After the other 3 had played their 2nd shots they each came over to help.

I'd probably been searching for about 3 minutes and was beginning to think it was a lost cause when my opponents mate found my ball.
It was actually sitting pretty nicely and any one of us could have found it, but the fact is that a guy that wanted me to lose (in a nice way) found my ball.

I hacked it out, played on to the green and 2 putted for what 10 minutes previously seemed like a very very unlikely win.

How many other sports would your opponent or opponent's supporter do everything they could to help you at the end of a match that's tied?

Almost made me feel bad for winning, but not quite. :)
 
Husband and i won a mixed match last week where his tee shot went into knee high fine grass.
We were giving up hope when opponent found it after about 4 and half minutes.
We went on to tie that hole despite yours truly slicing 4th shot out of bounds!

i've lost matches where I have found the opponent's ball when they were looking in the wrong place, but that way you can hold you head high.
 
We had a recent thread of a similar nature and the general consensus was that the majority would properly search for someones ball in the same way as he did. I personally couldn't convince myself to be so unsporting as to not look properly, or worse still, not own up to finding it when I had.
 
A tale of niceness for a change :)

I played a club singles matchplay tie recently, and to save having too much waiting around both of our regular partners joined us to make up a 4 ball.

The 4 of us are all mates anyway, but obviously my partner was rooting for me and the same for my opponents partner rooting for him.

It was a close match all the way, and we were all square after 17.

On 18 I hit my tee shot left and it was touch and go whether or not it would clear a water hazard, so I played a provisional, but with my opponent in the fairway there wasn't much hope of avoiding losing the match if I had to use it.

I got to where my ball would have been if it cleared the hazard and started searching. After the other 3 had played their 2nd shots they each came over to help.

I'd probably been searching for about 3 minutes and was beginning to think it was a lost cause when my opponents mate found my ball.
It was actually sitting pretty nicely and any one of us could have found it, but the fact is that a guy that wanted me to lose (in a nice way) found my ball.

I hacked it out, played on to the green and 2 putted for what 10 minutes previously seemed like a very very unlikely win.

How many other sports would your opponent or opponent's supporter do everything they could to help you at the end of a match that's tied?

Almost made me feel bad for winning, but not quite. :)

was it red staked?
 
Davey did this to us on the 7th last weekend in our first ever summer pairs match. One of our opponents took on the dog leg first of all, his partner then nobbed his shot and didn't even make it past the dog leg so they really needed to find the first shot. We all helped search, however reluctant I might have been and eventually Daveyck2k found it.......he later admitted that he was gutted to find it although I think we were about 4 down at that point so in truth it didn't really matter. And yes, we got battered.
 
Whilst I admire what the guy did I have to be honest and say if I was playing head to head with someone I wouldn't want my mate and A N Other playing as well. Good news that everyone was prepared to help and I guess the result went the right way for you so all well and good.
 
Whilst I admire what the guy did I have to be honest and say if I was playing head to head with someone I wouldn't want my mate and A N Other playing as well. Good news that everyone was prepared to help and I guess the result went the right way for you so all well and good.

I know what you mean Homer, but rather that than waiting a couple of minutes on every shot as it's pretty much solid with 4 balls round our place at the weekend.
 
What the OP has described is basically what golf is all about and to my mind, what seperates it from most other sports. Too may other sports are littered with cheating and bad sportsmanship but thankfully it is very rare in golf.

And may it always stay that way :thup:
 
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