Prep golfers and tennis players are honor bound

Published 11:29 pm Saturday, May 16, 2009

What if high school basketball players wore whistles and called their own fouls? How chaotic would prep baseball be if participants were required to call balls and strikes?

In this alternate reality, teenagers — not impartial officials — would be in charge of enforcing the rules and maintaining order.

Sounds weird, right? But for high school golfers and tennis players, self-regulation is a routine part of life on the course or court.

In those two sports, there are no umpires or referees looking over competitors’ shoulders, making sure they follow the rules. Athletes are players and officials. They are expected to enforce and follow an honor code.

Tennis players must decide whether serves and volleys are in or out. The player closest to the ball — the one who receives the shot — makes the call.

Golfers arguably have a more difficult task. Expected to absorb a mind-boggling number of rules, they also keep their own scores during a round, hole by hole, and record scores for one opponent in their playing group. At the end of the round, the scorecards must match.

Before asking the obvious question — how often do golfers and tennis players cheat? — consider this: What effect does the extra responsibility have on athletes?

Longtime Snohomish High tennis coach Dick Jansen says it’s one of the most valuable learning tools in prep sports.

“Coaches are educators,” Jansen said, “and anything that you can get the kids to draw on from their experience in high school athletics is the teaching of life skills and being able to translate what they do on the court to everyday life.” The honesty demanded in tennis, he added, “gives tennis an advantage over other sports.”

“In golf and tennis,” said Darrell Olson, who’s in his 11th year as Everett High School’s boys golf coach and also coached boys tennis for seven season in the 1990s, “integrity is the most important thing that a player leaves with, we hope as coaches.”

As local golfers and tennis players prepare for upcoming district tournaments, they yearn for a trip to the state tournament. With so much on the line, is cheating more likely to occur? No, said Kamiak senior Reid Martin, the defending Class 4A boys golf champion. Regardless of the stakes, cheating is rare in prep golf, he said.

“Ninety-eight, 99 percent of the people that I have played with are honest as can be,” the University of Central Florida recruit said, “because it’s a gentleman’s sport.”

But clearly, opportunities for cheating in golf are frequent. After teeing off, players often go their separate ways in pursuit of their balls. Isolated from the others, a player can easily kick a ball to a better spot or secretly shirk a penalty or hazard. That’s not acceptable, Martin said. “I’d rather take 10th place (and be honest) than place first and cheat.” he said.

High school golf and tennis coaches usually start each season by reviewing the rules. Snohomish’s Jansen teaches his charges how to call a tennis shot in or out — if the ball touches any part of the line, even the edge, it’s in — and he tries to instill an attitude. He tells the Panthers if they’re ever unsure about a call, err on the side of rewarding the opponent.

“At Snohomish, we give calls,” Jansen said. “If there’s any doubt about it, we give the call.”

Tennis players are forced to make quick decisions, using their vision, interpretation of the rules and character.

“There’s certain benefits, in that you’re never blaming officiating,” Edmonds-Woodway tennis coach Dan Crist said. “You never have the situation of, ‘We lost the game because we got a bad call.’”

If a tennis player thinks an opponent is making bad calls — intentionally or accidentally — the frustrated player can request a line judge. Usually a neutral coach or tennis-savvy parent, the line judge stands at the side of the net and makes a call only when a player asks for one.

Line-judge requests are rare. Crist said it happens maybe once per season. Jansen, who has coached tennis for about 40 years, said he can count the number of requests he’s seen on two hands. “I really like the kids to work through it, if they can,” Jansen said.

Thea Marriott, a senior, played tennis for four years at Stanwood. She said players don’t always get it right.

“Sometimes it can get frustrating if you think the girls across the net aren’t making the right calls,” she said. “But for the most part, everyone is good and has good integrity.”

Once last season, in a division doubles match, Marriott’s opponents asked for a line judge. That surprised Marriott and her partner, who thought they were making the correct calls. It also gave them extra motivation to win. “I definitely played a lot more aggressively,” Marriott said, “because I was upset that they thought we were calling it badly.”

In golf, some mistakes happen not because of cheating but because there’s so much to remember. “The golf rule book is ridiculous,” said Olson, Everett’s boys golf coach. “It’s so thick. It’s unbelievable.”

As prep golfers and tennis players learn the rules and officiate their sports, they learn about themselves. How important is integrity? How important is it to win? At what cost?

Said Stanwood’s Marriott, “It makes a lot of people decide, ‘Am I going to be honest or not?’ I’m not sure if it will change someone, but it will show how they are.”

Mike Cane: mcane@heraldnet.com. Check out the prep sports blog Double Team at cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet/doubleteam.