[Bob_Huntley]

The question comes about from an incident that happened in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in a football match between the 1951 FA Cup winners Newcastle United FC and Rhodesia. It was warm and the field was firm, the ball was bouncing off the turf which didn’t happen in England. The amateurs of the home team were running the pros around the park. At half-time the Newcastle coach got hold of the ball plunged it in a bucket of cold water, the ball became appreciably heavier and the day was saved.
 
Baseball and cricket have much in common when it comes to tampering. There are a number of actions in which a fielder illegally alters the condition of the ball. The primary motivation of ball tampering is to interfere with the aerodynamics of the ball. There have been some pretty testy incidents in international cricket relationships over this.

My question is this, has any first class golfer done anything similar? I have heard that a dab of Vaseline on the face of the club does cut down the spin of the ball. It may be apocryphal but I heard that Lee Trevino questioned the habit of an English Ryder Cup player in putting saliva on his club face.

Does anything come to mind?


Bob

[Pete_Pittock]

Keeping golf balls near a heat source.

[jeffwarne]

I specifically asked this question of the USGA many years ago about sweeping your driver in the morning dew as you walk from green to the next tee, using it as half walking stick, half fidgety plaything - the same sort of thing you see people do at all times of the day when the grass is bone dry.  Inevitably, the face of your club gets wet, which reduces spin.

I was playing calligraphy golf at the time and was concerned about a penalty. They said that as long as you're not intentionally doing it to get the face wet, that's OK, but if your purpose is to get it wet, that would be a penalty because in that case, even though it's only morning dew, that would be a foreign substance.   

I also asked a similar question about a situation I had in a tournament where I had gnats flying around above my ball in the fairway.  I had some bug spray in my bag and I wanted to spray the bugs away but I was concerned about the bug spray being a foreign substance that would get on the ball, so I didn't.    They said that if you can't wave them away with your hand, and you need to spray them, try to get as little on the ball as possible (hover your othe hand over the ball to protect it), and it'll be OK even if a little bit accidentally gets on the ball.

Certainly a scientist will dispute this, but I've always found dew to be far hotter than rain water or sprinkler water in terms of getting a flier out of wet grass.
Perhpas I'm crazy.

When we used to play winter golf at Long Cove, Jim Ferree used to heat his golf balls up in a glass of very warm water 30 minutes before he played.
perfectly legal, and makes a difference, although he was playing Pinnacle Golds by then.

[Mike_Clayton]

Bob,

The English Ryder Cup player was Guy Hunt.

A friend of mine caddied for Trevino at Royal Melbourne in the 1974 Chrysler Classic. That was the event that cemented RMs reputation as having the most fearsome greens in the world. They were brick hard and crazy fast.
Trevino famously said at the end - he finished 3rd- 'take a picture of me going out the game because you won't ever see me coming back in'

My friend told me Trevino was eating Minties (a sticky minty sweet) and then using the sticky component of the sweet on the ball to help it grip the green. It was inventive at least.

[Thomas Dai]

Would I be correct in presuming that the Guy Hunt whom Mike refers to above is the same Guy Hunt who is now a Tour Rules Official?

Also, I've heard it mentioned that Ben Hogan, when he won The Open in 1953 at Carnoustie, was supposed to have carried small thin metal boxes in both trouser pockets. These boxes contained lit charcoal and he kept golf balls in his pockets too, which were not surprisingly, also nice and warm.

I also recall, in the days when almost all new golf balls came wrapped in paper, that putting them in the fridge was supposed to make them a little harder and less liable to cut when you used them.

All the best

[Patrick_Mucci]

Thomas,

Hockey pucks are refrigerated pre-game

Refrigerating golf balls would harm their performance

Bob,

I think spitting on the club face was employed when balls used to curve more.

When Ping putters first came out, golfers, including one on the PGA Tour, used to slide the back of the putter under their ball marker and surreptitiously carry it closer to the hole and then slide the marker down on it's new location.

It worked well when the marker was a penny as he color of the penny and the color of the Ping Putter were similar

[Mike_Clayton]

Thomas

Same Guy Hunt.. He played with Nicklaus in the last round at Muirfield in 1972 when Trevino won.
John Huggan interviewed him years later and said he knew more about the round than Guy did. 'Completely hopeless - didn't remember a thing.'

[Jud_T]

Golf Monthly confidentially polled 50 Tour Caddies and asked the question "Have you ever witnessed a Tour Pro CHEATING in a Tour Event?"  54% responded yes!  So much for the code of honor in the Gentleman's Game....

[John_Cullum]

Golf Monthly confidentially polled 50 Tour Caddies and asked the question "Have you ever witnessed a Tour Pro CHEATING in a Tour Event?"  54% responded yes!  So much for the code of honor in the Gentleman's Game....

Was it the guy they toted for or one of the other competitors? I'm guessing it was the other guy

[Matthew Petersen]

When I was in high school (the balata days) a LOT of guys would refrigerate or even freeze their balls overnight prior to playing. I got various answers as to why (harder goes farther, makes it harder to cut, etc) but always figured it must be an apocryphal thing since no one could even give me a consistent answer on what the point was.

[RJ_Daley]

I don't think it is illegal, but I seem to remember a tip by Snead that said that if you want to have an iron less prone to slice or hook, take several practice swings through turf taking large divots, then while the grooves are full of dirt and sand and grass stain, don't clean them with a towel, just hit the ball for a straighter and lower flight.

[Wade Whitehead]

Golf Monthly confidentially polled 50 Tour Caddies and asked the question "Have you ever witnessed a Tour Pro CHEATING in a Tour Event?"  54% responded yes!  So much for the code of honor in the Gentleman's Game....

You could have just one cheater seen by 54% of caddies.

WW

[Robert Mercer Deruntz]

A different form of tampering took place in the 1993 sectional US Open qualifying at Old Oaks CC, in Purchase, NY.  Gene Westmoreland, the MGA Executive Director set a bunch of front pins.  The superintendent watered to the point  of creating tight lie mud fringes and aprons, but had the greens  rock firm and running at a stip of 12.  There was no way a solidly struck shot could end up below the hole, and on a couple of greens, it was almost impossible to even keep the 1st putt on the green if you were putting straight down at the hole.  On 17 , our group sat in the fairway for what seemed like forever as a couple of players putted off the green down the hill a ways, and then chunked a couple muddy specials. 

[Jim Nugent]

Golf Monthly confidentially polled 50 Tour Caddies and asked the question "Have you ever witnessed a Tour Pro CHEATING in a Tour Event?"  54% responded yes!  So much for the code of honor in the Gentleman's Game....

The number is shocking, but suffers the same limitations as any poll.  Are the people taking part in the poll telling the truth, and are they right?  A CBS poll taken in 2009 found 56% of American women believe in ghosts, and 29% say they've seen one...

[Jason Connor]

Golf Monthly confidentially polled 50 Tour Caddies and asked the question "Have you ever witnessed a Tour Pro CHEATING in a Tour Event?"  54% responded yes!  So much for the code of honor in the Gentleman's Game....

Terribly designed survey.  if each positive respondent observed the same guy, then the cheating rate is still about 1/156 = 0.6% -- which is surprising in the other direction.

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