Here's a quickie

[FireJimTressel.com]

You're covering a local golf tournament - be it a high school tourney or a city tourney - and someone in the group you're walking with loses a ball. Is it OK for a sports reporter to help that person look for the ball?

 

[DyePack]

No, but it is OK to kick it farther into the rough.

 

[FireJimTressel.com]

Especially if that guy's opponent would be a better story, eh DP?

 

[Cosmo]

I don't see a problem with it. Fans will help the golfer find the ball anyway. If the rules stated that only the participants could look for it, I'd have an issue with it. But that's not the case.

 

[Batman]

This actually happened to me last weekend. I found the ball under a branch, way away from where they were looking for it, and didn't even think about not telling them. Of course, it was a scramble so they weren't using that shot anyway, but still...

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

I don't have a problem with it either. It'd be like if the ball came to rest 15 feet from where you were standing, you'd point it out.

 

[John]

I know it's the nice thing to do, but aren't you potentially affecting the outcome of the event?

By finding a ball that might otherwise not be found, you just saved the guy a couple of strokes.

 

[Mystery_Meat]

We're not supposed to affect the outcome of an event, but helping find a missing ball doesn't fall under that heading. Unless we're talking John Kruk ...

 

[Cosmo]

I know it's the nice thing to do, but aren't you potentially affecting the outcome of the event?

By finding a ball that might otherwise not be found, you just saved the guy a couple of strokes.

Not really. Again, anyone else on the course (fans, rangers, officials, etc.) would help the player find the ball. I just covered three days of match play, and the opponents were helpful to each other in finding balls. It's a courtesy. Even if you find the ball when they can't, it's likely going to be in a bad place (deep rough, behind a tree, etc.), so it'll be like a penalty anyway.

 

[Overrated]

I'd just half-ass it and if I happened to see the ball, I'd point it out.

 

[85bears]

Ask Michael Bamberger.

 

[Cosmo]

Ask Michael Bamberger.

Definitely, though, it's not your place to point out rules violations. That's up to the players. Helping to find the ball is innocent enough, but as Bamberger found out, you shouldn't tattle to rules officials that a player was doing something wrong. Now if you just report on it, well, you did see it ...

 

[Batman]

Maybe it'd be wrong at a pro event, but most of the local tournaments we cover just have weekend golfers running around the course playing for pro shop dollars. The guy whose ball I found had the better part of a six-pack in him and his team finished halfway through the last flight. I figure he needed all the help he could get :)

 

[ogre]

I wouldn't take part in the hunt for the ball. Not out of ethics, just because. I wouldn't ask the golfers to help me write the story either, so that's fair.

Now to threadjack, sort of. What if it's not finding the ball, but instead saying whether you saw a rule violation or not? Example. A golfer is taking a shot under a tree and his opponent claims that the first golfer hits a branch with his backswing. The guy who too the shot says no. Do you say you saw it or not?

I wouldn't take part in the inquiry. I would write what I saw though.

 

[TwoGloves]

I had a rules official come up to me at a tournament I was covering yesterday and ask me if I saw where a ball went because I was standing up by the green. I pointed out where I thought it went. No big deal.

 

[write then drink]

We're not supposed to affect the outcome of an event, but helping find a missing ball doesn't fall under that heading. Unless we're talking John Kruk ...

not funny. no class

 

[2underpar]

of course you help them find it. If you don't, they spend five minutes looking for it, decalre it lost, then it takes them five minutes to walk back to the tee, hit another ball, takes them five minutes to walk back to the ball that is in play, another couple of minutes to hit their approach shot in 110-degree heat.
By now, you've lost the 15 minutes that it will take you to write the 8-inch gamer on the sixth flight at the screen door open. that's about three beers of lost time in my book.

 

[Songbird]

"What are you, the boyfriend? Here for a quickie?" [/Larry Miller's doorman character in Seinfeld]