Do we need to worry?

With the allegations surrounding cricket at the moment, and the hooha regarding snooker, what do we all think about the robustness of golf and its professional players with regard to betting and its obvious pitfalls.

From what I can gather, the cricket situation seems to be centred around the illegal practice of spot betting prevalent in Asia, and the structure of the actual game of cricket (e.g. there's plenty of opportunities during a game for bets to be laid dependent on just one individual).

Now, I'm pretty sure that golf's not a massive draw (at the moment) in Asia, but, like cricket, there are plenty of opportunities where one player can change things (I'm thinking say, a player saying "I'll putt X amount of putts during round Y". 

Am I jumping to conclusions here, or just naive to think it couldn't happen to golf?

(Or am I just suspicious about all the heavy betting on the 3D Cubed Team in this year's YMCA Charity Golf Day????) 

Players as we know in keeping with the self regularity aspect within this great game

respect those 'traditions' that go with it - also at a professional level the rewards

are higher in Golf than playing cricket for Pakistan - however let us not kid ourselves

if an average corrupt professional golfer could pick up £10,000 simply by having a bogey at the last hole then who the hell would know ??l  

Professional Golf is ruled by Professional Golfers. They know what goes on and will act accordingly.

There have been a number of issues in the past which have technically been unprofessional but no-one was deprived of anything.

I don't like the Headline of "Match Fixing" because it isn't. It is not doing things in the correct spirit of the game, but 3 No-Balls sent down at a set time by a set Bowler did not have any effect on the result. It is Fraud though.

TheLyth

I think golf in it's self is a much more difficult sport to fix, ironically simply because it is too easy for a single player to alter the result.  Imagine for a second the scenario that Greg Norman 'threw' the Masters on a couple of occasions (hypothetically).  To all intents and purposes you've got an open and shut case, doing really well and collapses spectacularly on the back nine to be beaten to the title - obviously a fix from a player of that quality.  Where the argument for that falls down, and I imagine it's the same for every single golfer out there, is what financial reward could ever replace a scabby $50 green jacket?  The simple answer is that it can't happen, simply because as social a game as golf is, nobody ever wants to lose.

 The main difference between golf and snooker/cricket is the relatively low prize money (granted IPL favours athe chosen few) in cricket/snooker involved. It follows then that if an opportunity aises it could be tempting as no doubt they will see the only victim is the betting company. I cannot see how any top ranking golf pro is interested in money as they're loaded anyway, I'm sure it's all about titles for them.

 What I can't understand is the concept of spot betting set in the context of fair play.  Surely this is a contradiction in terms. Any person would be naive to think that there's not something going on if the outturn of no ball deliveries matches the bet placed. This is possibly the main reason why there's no betting on cricket in Pakistan.

Colin,

"Spot Betting" on a certain occurrence at a certain time shouldn't be taken away from Betting IF groups don't go around making sure it does happen. That is the side of this I don't like.

TheLyth