NESN

Golfer Disqualifies Self From Q-School, Ends PGA Tour Dreams Week After Misstep

Meet Blayne Barber — quite possibly the most honest man in America. (A particularly relevant trait on the eve of the Presidential election.)

Like many PGA professionals, the 22-year-old has dreams of eventually performing on the PGA Tour. Coming off an All-American career at Auburn, Barber had two starts on the Web.com Tour in 2012, and did very respectably, finishing T-33 and T-15.

Through the first stage of Q-School, Barber had put himself in good position to make a run at a PGA Tour card, finishing five strokes clear of the cut to move on to the second stage. However, Barber disqualified himself from that opportunity last Friday, calling the PGA Tour personally and informing them of an infraction that otherwise no one ever would have noticed.

While taking a bunker shot during the first stage, Barber thought he moved a leaf in addressing the ball, and as such imposed a one-stroke penalty on himself. His caddy said he didn’t even see the leaf move, but Barber still penalized himself.

The problem? Moving an impediment in a bunker is a two-stroke penalty and Barber should have incurred a two-stroke penalty. Now, even if Barber had taken the two stroke he still would have finished well clear of the cut, but at the end of his round he signed an incorrect scorecard, and didn’t realize his mistake until a few days later.

“I continued to pray about it and think about it, and I just did not have any peace about it,” Barber told Golfweek magazine. “I knew I needed to do the right thing. I knew it was going to be disqualification.”

With PEDs dominating sports headlines over the past years, it’s nice to see that there is some true honesty left in some corners of athletics.

Photo via Twitter/Blayne Barber

Photo of the Night

We were going to write “This pretty much says it all,” but this Philadelphia Eagles fan took that from us, too.

Quote of the Night

“Somewhere here, it’s going to come together.”
–Philadelphia Eagles head coach (for right now, anyway) Andy Reid, possibly bordering on delusional

Tweet of the Night

If only …

Using an electronic voting machine? Push Up Down Left Up Down to power up to Level 2 where you fight a dragon #Election2012

— Eric Stangel (@EricStangel) November 6, 2012

Video of the Night

For the record, this makes no sense to us, either, but someone was clearly having fun with the video-editing software.