In the past, sport was something enjoyed by young men, and rarely by young women, of means; it was an amateur pastime and was played for enojoyment and prestige.
Today is very different. Most sports have been 'professionalised' and are now played with money in mind. The way in which they are played, the rules and the the prizes are all determined by financial considerations. Consequently some sports, though certainly not all, have been corrupted and are no longer played in a sportsmanlike manner; cheating has become a normal part of the 'game' in some instances. The prime example has to be football in which the rules seem to be ignored most of the time, particularly those relating to the direct interactions between players. Cricket, too, is no longer played in the gentlemanly manner that it was in my youth and players will happily get away with anything they can.
Today, we've seen two instances of rule breaches in different sports which seem to have been treated very differently. In the Formula 1 Grand Prix qualifying round in China, the Red Bull driver Mark Webber, recognized as being one of the top drivers around, ran out of fuel; as the adjudicators monitor the fuel to ensure it is within prescribed standards, Webber failed to provide a sample and suffered the full penalty for his offence. He will start from last place in the race tomorrow. In the 'Masters' golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, Tiger Woods not only played a shot from an incorrect position but also returned an incorrect score; both of these are offences, the first having a standard penalty of 2 shots and the second of mandatory disqualification. At the discretion of the stewards, only the first has been applied, though the full story may not yet have been told.
In Formula 1, the stewards chose to be very hard on Webber, a man for whom little seems to go right; the rules are the rules. In Golf, a sport in which adherence to the rules is usually paramount, the stewards have chosen to be somewhat picky about which rules to follow. In fact, as more details are revealed, it seems that they may even have done their damnest to avoid doing anything in support of 'their man'. Woods clearly played from the wrong place and yet the rules official on the course said nothing; Woods reportedly told officials in the scoring hut what he had done and they did nothing. It was not until he told the press and public that the officials took any notice. Now they have done as little as they can; a 2 shot penalty but no disqualification.
There can be no doubt that what Woods did was wrong but it seems that he actually did all that he reasonably could have done to ensure that the officials knew exactly what had happened; it appears that he is not to blame for this debacle. Nonetheless, and I acknowledge that I do not like the man one little bit, he should have sought proper advice on the course and should have been disqualified for returning an inaccurate card. That he is happily playing the third round as I write tells me that the officials in Augusta have bowed to the financial and nationalistic pressures on them by allowing Woods to continue, albeit with a stroke penalty.
I had thought that golf was one of sports that was immune to corruption but now I begin to wonder. When money and, in the particular case of the USA, national pride are considered of over-riding importance, how can we be sure that adjudications on the application of the rules will be fair and just ? The simple answer is that we cannot.
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