The Sandbag that Changed Golf: Deepdale, 1955

The concepts of honor and integrity in golf are inseparable from the inevitability of cheating. The former are prominent because the latter is so easy—when self-policing is the best hope for fair play, you better have a code of honor to work as a secondary enforcement. In 1955, at Deepdale Country Club on Long Island, that code seemed to fail when two unknown sandbaggers won a tournament and took home thousands of dollars thanks to an associated Calcutta auction. In fact, the code had not failed: A crisis of conscience led to a confession, the scandal became national news, and the USGA took action. For the two men at the heart of it, the fallout was swift and severe, and lasted a lifetime. On this episode, we look at golf's most notorious amateur scandal and the aftershocks that transformed the amateur game.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.