PGA Tour pro responds to accusation he cheated at Quicken Loans National

We got golf beef!

You expect plenty of Tiger news coming out of the Quicken Loans National, Woods’ own event in the D.C. area. You do not expect Joel Dahmen and Sung Kang to be among the hot topics on Sunday night and Monday morning. But the c-word will do that in golf.

Late Sunday, Dahmen went there and said his playing partner, Kang, cheated on the 10th hole of the final round. You almost never, ever hear pros throw that word out there when talking about another pro. Golf has a lot of old, unwritten (maybe antiquated!) notions of how the “gentleman’s game” should be and you just don’t say another guy cheated even if you’re 99 percent sure of intent. It just doesn’t happen, so we get a lot of words like “dicey” or “questionable” or whatever other softened term that might be used. Dahmen softened nothing and stayed firm as followers asked for more details.

Unfortunately we don’t have video of the dispute and the ball going in the hazard. The 10th hole at TPC Potomac can be a tricky par-5 and Kang ended up getting his drop on the side of the hazard closest to the green. Dahmen thought it never crossed the hazard before going in and the drop should have been on the far side from the green. The two argued about it for so long that the group behind them, Ben Crane and Ryan Palmer, played through and onto the next hole.

Kang eventually saved par, posted a 64 in the final round and finished in third place. Dahmen then use Twitter to air it out publicly.

Dahmen would add that he signed Kang’s scorecard because it was futile and a PGA Tour official would have just done it if he refused.

Rules drama and player infighting is always a tasty diversion we can never get enough of in golf. But cheating is a pretty serious grenade to launch at another player and it had generated too much infamy overnight. So Kang had to respond. He relied on the ruling from a third party, offered no real specifics, and did not engage Dahmen’s heat, using more of an “We’re on to Cincinnati” approach.

There are some really bad, dark corners of Twitter. Calling them corners might even be generous, as the heart of Twitter might actually be bad! But whether it’s to flame the USGA, complain about a course, embarrass themselves, or call out another colleague, PGA Tour pros having Twitter accounts has definitely made the game more interesting.

It’s safe to assume this controversy will quiet down and go away quickly until the next time the two are (hopefully!) paired together in an event. But it’s some fun Monday morning spice from the QL National.