By Terry Baddoo

This week sport acquired a new villain from the most unlikely of sources: Women’s golf. The sport’s normally scandal-free Solheim Cup was rocked to its core by European team-member Suzann Petersen, who became public enemy number one after breaching golfing etiquette by refusing to concede a putt against the USA.

Later in the week, the 34-year-old Norwegian was shamed by the media into issuing a groveling apology for abusing the spirit of the game, and will likely be stigmatized and possibly traumatized by the incident for the rest of her career. But, rather than jump on the bandwagon of condemnation perhaps we should ask whether this reluctant headline maker actually did anything wrong?

Anyone who watches the Ryder Cup, the male equivalent of the Solheim Cup, knows that the rivalry between Europe and the USA is extremely combative. The genteel conventions of the gallery are replaced by a rowdy soccer-type atmosphere. There’s trash talking between the players and captains, and a winning is everything mentality that’s about as jingoistic as it gets. Should we expect the Solheim Cup to be any different?

No Gimmies in Golf

Furthermore, the aim of golf is to put the ball in the hole in fewer strokes than your opponent. Putts have been missed from inches, let alone the foot or so at the center of Petersen-gate. The Yips is recognized as an actual physical disorder in which extreme nervousness can cause an athlete in any sport to miss easy plays. It’s prevalent in golf and can appear at any time, which essentially means that nothing is certain.

Some years ago I interviewed legendary German golfer, Bernhard Langer, about the condition. He’s among the most famous yips sufferers in sports having cost Europe the 1991 Ryder Cup when he blew a crucial putt on the final hole. Don’t tell him that any putt is a gimmie.

Isn’t it absolutely understandable then, that in a highly charged competitive environment Petersen demanded that her opponent finish the job?

No Putting the Sportsmanship Back in Sports

Okay, so she was ruthless. But could it also be that the game’s etiquette is out of sync with the current mindset of professional sports? In 2010 I caught a lot of flak for suggesting that soccer should follow the example of rugby, which awards penalty tries if the referee believes a team has been denied a certain score by an opponent’s misconduct. My suggestion came after watching Luis Suarez deny Ghana a match-winning goal in the World Cup quarterfinals by deliberately slapping the ball off the line. Asamoah Gyan missed the subsequent spot kick and Uruguay would go on to win in a penalty shoot-out.

I felt the rules rewarded intentional rule-breaking and needed to be changed. However, the majority insisted that Suarez was just being professional and patriotic, and argued that it’s fundamental to soccer that a goal only registers if the ball crosses the line.

So, applying that logic to golf, the ball should have to drop into the hole to count as a successful putt. Professional golf is a high stakes game and professional golfers are in the business of winning every bit as much as professional soccer players. That makes the notion of a “gimmie” as antiquated as a pair of Plus fours (which, in case you didn't know, are those old-school golf knickers players used to wear!)

Petersen may not have acted within the spirit of the game, but she didn’t cheat, and, like Suarez, she was being a contemporary professional. Yes, we can get all sanctimonious about the morality of her behavior, as many in the media did, but sometimes professional sport is what it is and not what we say we’d like to it be.