Early on, Tashi repeatedly asked me for swing tips, but each time I politely declined. "This isn't the best place to take a lesson," I'd say.
Midway through the round, Tashi asked me how I met my wife. When I said that we had lived in the same dormitory during our freshman year at Cornell University, Tashi decided to give me his dating status at Garden City College in Bangalore, India, where he studied computer science. "I have lots of friends who are girls, but I don't like to get close," he said. "The girls will say, 'Come shopping with me' or 'Come over to my house.' But I like to be free and single."
"Will you ever get married?" I asked.
"I don't know," Tashi said. "But I like love, and I write poems about it. I have some poems on poetry.com. I write poems whenever I see love."
"Have you ever seen love on the golf course?" I replied.
"No way," Tashi said flatly. "Golf is fun, but it's a loveless game."
After finishing my second round at about noon, I returned to the course to watch the final group, which included Lotey and Randy, who were tied for first at twelve-over par when I found them on the fifteenth hole. About thirty men were following the leaders on this cool, sunny afternoon. Leading up to the tournament, Randy and Lotey had been among the mellowest Bhutanese I'd met, which isn't surprising considering they're the two best golfers in Bhutan. They both speak and walk gently and deliberately, and the cadences of their golf swings are rhythmic and smooth.
At fifteen, Lotey took a one-shot lead when he drained a 15- foot putt for par and Randy made a bogey. Lotey gave a mighty Tiger Woods-like fist pump and yelled "Yes!" when his putt dropped, and I was surprised by the outburst. I could see that the veins in his neck and his face were much redder than normal, indicating that he was jacked up and nervous.
When the leaders reached the seventeenth tee, Lotey was ahead by two strokes. Randy hit the seventeenth green with his tee shot, while Lotey's ball sailed 10 yards over the green into a shallow swale. It was a precarious position. Lotey didn't have much green between the fringe and the flagstick; the green sloped away from him; and the wet turf was spongy, so there was a decent chance that Lotey would flub the shot. I walked over to watch Lotey. With the gaggle of onlookers and me standing 20 feet away, Lotey lifted his ball with his hand because it had been plugged. Following the rules, he dropped the ball a few feet from its original position on much drier grass that was no closer to the hole than his original position.
I'll never forget what I saw next. Lotey stood behind his ball to line up the shot. Then as he walked toward the ball to go into the address position, he stopped just behind the ball and with one foot gently tamped down the grass directly behind the ball. I was stunned. Lotey had cheated in plain view of his playing partners and the spectators. According to The Rules of Golf, "The ball must be played as it lies" and "A player must not improve or allow to be improved . . . the position or lie of his ball." Clearly, Lotey had stepped behind the ball to mush down the grass and give himself a better chance of making clean contact.
My heart was racing, but everybody else was nonchalant, as if nothing had happened. But why? They, too, had seen Lotey improve his lie. I wondered whether the spectators knew the rules. Of course they did. Playing your ball as it lies is the game's most basic rule. Lotey also had to know the rule. He'd been playing the game for eons, was an excellent player, and had competed in international competitions. Lotey addressed his ball, swung, and made solid contact. The ball flew on a soft, low arc. It landed on the edge of the green, bounced a couple of times, rolled directly at the hole, clanked off the flagstick, and fell into the cup for a birdie. Lotey raised his arms in ecstasy. I shook my head in utter disbelief.
Cheating happens at every level of golf. How much it happens is hard to say, because evidence is largely anecdotal. At the 1985 Indonesian Open, Vijay Singh, then a fledgling tar pro altered his scorecard to improve his score by one shot, and for that tour officials suspended him for a year. A few years ago, the Starwood Hotels and Resorts company surveyed 410 business executives, and 82 percent of them admitted to cheating at golf.
