World No 1 Scottie Scheffler has insisted it was wrong for anyone to brand Bryson DeChambeau a cheat following a rules saga at the Open Championship. DeChambeau received a two-shot penalty after his second round at Royal Birkdale after a lengthy and heated exchange with R&A officials, who ruled that he had illegally flattened the grass around his ball on the fifth hole.
During the third round yesterday, spectators taunted DeChambeau, with a few cries of cheat heard from the galleries. Scheffler leaped to the defense of his fellow American and insisted it was wrong for anyone to question DeChambeau's character or integrity.
"All I can really say is I think maybe we need to be a little bit more strict in the way that we are policing guys," Scheffler said. "But it's a little bit of a balance because you've got certain guys like a Bryson who every shot he hits is going to be shown on TV. When you have camera angles that are far away, things can look different than they do when you're right there."
Camera Angles and Intent
Scheffler emphasized that he has known DeChambeau for a long time and has never seen him cheat. "All I'll say is Bryson, I've known him for a long time, and he's a lot of things, but he's definitely not a cheater," Scheffler said. "I've never seen him cheat once, whether we were having a putting contest on the putting green or chipping contest, or anytime we played amateur golf, I never saw anything suspicious."
He suggested that the incident may have looked worse on television than it actually was. "When you're watching him there from that camera angle, maybe he was a touch careless around his ball, but I don't think he did anything intentionally," Scheffler said. "We've seen penalties happen with - like, you remember Jon Rahm a couple years ago at the Memorial when his ball moved in the rough, and it's like to the naked eye, can you really tell that?"
Rules and Golf Traditions
Scheffler appeared to indicate that there have been instances where players look to exploit loopholes in the rules to gain an advantage. "I think sometimes it's just a difficult position in the game of golf," he continued. "When I was growing up, if this was the line, here are the rules and this was the right side of it. And this is when you're doing things against the rule, you always tried to stray really far that way."
"I feel like at times, sometimes you see players maybe push it a little bit further than they should," Scheffler added. "I think we need to kind of get back to the traditions of the game and maybe we do need to police things a little bit more stricter in the game. But like I said, it's a tough line to cross. That's why it's hard for me to say anything like this. Bryson is a guy that I've known for a really long time. He's not a cheater."
