Not all golfers are good guys. You don't want to beat #7.
Hi, I’m Mel Sole, Director of Instruction at the Mel Sole Golf School, headquartered at Pawleys Plantation Golf and Country Club in Pawleys Island, SC. We conduct 1, 2 and 3-day golf schools, hourly golf lessons, and senior golf schools—any golf instruction program your heart desires. Give us a call at 800-624-4653 or 843-237-4993. We will be happy to book a commuter school or a package that contains accommodations, golf, and golf school.
There will always cheats and liars among us. They are greedy, selfish, good-for-nothing people who try to benefit from other people's weakness or misfortune! When I find out that these people are also golfers, it really sticks in my craw. To me, golf is an honest game featuring people with honesty, integrity, and selflessness. Every day I teach golfers from all walks of life, and almost all of these will fit into the categories I have listed above. Those that don't fit on this list have no place on the course. Here are the top 12 villains brought to you by Josh Sens, writing for GOLF.com
Golf likes to cast itself as a great game of honor. But its sunny reputation runs against this hard reality: through its history, golf has also drawn its share of despots, murderers and thieves.
Sure, there was Ben Hogan. But there was also Bernie Madoff. Yes, Bryon Nelson played. But so did Kim Jong Il. We could go on. And come to think of it, we will!
Here's a look at 12 of the most unsavory characters to ever swing a club.
Bernie Madoff.
Photo: Royal Gazette
Of the estimated $18 billion Bernie made off with in the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, more than $1 billion came from fellow golfers at private clubs along the East Coast, where the fraudulent financier maintained close ties and, in some cases, his own membership. Madoff’s index was listed as a 9.4, but when the scandal broke, word got out that he hadn’t posted a score in years. It was just another number that was too good to be true.
Not all golfers are good guys.
Kim Jong Il.
Photo: YouTube
Never mind the cartoonish South Park depictions of him. There was nothing comical about Kim (above, right), the so-called Supreme Leader of one of the world’s most murderous regimes. Well, actually, this is kinda funny: in 1994, in his first and only attempt at the game, the North Korean tyrant supposedly fired a 38-under 34 at Pyongyang Golf Club, in a round highlighted by 11 holes-in-one.
Allen Stanford.
Photo: The Gardian
Sir Allen Stanford was the formal title of the knighted financier, and did he ever turn out to be a royal sleaze. His umbrella company, the Stanford Financial Group, didn’t merely sponsor a PGA Tour event as well as such top players as David Toms and Vijay Singh. It was also part of a shady business empire through which Stanford perpetrated a multi-billion dollar financial scam. Stanford is currently serving a 110-year prison sentence. Among the investors he bilked was Henrik Stenson, who lost a reported $8 million to Stanford’s scheme.
Nicolae Ceausescu.
The genocidal Romanian despot met his death by firing squad in 1989. Years before that, in the early 1970s, he met his match on the golf course when he played--and lost--an 18 hole exhibition against another national leader. Ceausescu’s opponent? Richard M. Nixon, who claimed not to be a crook but, in the eyes of many, was.
Not all golfers are good guys.
O.J. Simpson.
Before being implicated in the grisly Brentwood double-murder to which his name will forever be linked, Simpson was a member in good standing at nearby Riviera Country Club. Nowadays, of course, he spends his time at a less prestigious institution: Lovelock Correction Center in Nevada, where he’s serving a 33-year sentence for multiple felonies, including armed robbery and kidnapping.
Karl Henkell.
No Photo:
Adolf Hitler had countless yes-men. One was Henkell, aka “the golf fuhrer,” the scion of a wealthy wine-making family who served as president of the German Golf Union. In the early 1930s, in preparation for a propagandist amateur golf tournament held in Germany in advance of ’36 Berlin Olympics, Henkell toured the eastern seaboard of the United States, visiting marquee country clubs along the way. Among the luminaries who gave him a warm welcome was by by Augusta National co-founder Bobby Jones.
Photo: The Gardian
