By Rob Ficiur

Hypothetical story:
Bob and Dan were talking.  Bob whispered “If I paid you a million dollars would you help me steal from your employer?”
Dan hemmed and hawed for a moment and then replied “Well…if it is for a million dollars, I guess I would.”
“Great!” Bob exclaimed.  “Here is a dollar…let’s get started!”
“Wait!” Dan replied tossing the dollar back at Bob.  “What do you take me for…a crook?”
“We have already established that,” Bob grinned, “Now we are just haggling over the price.”
In our world where politicians sometimes don’t keep all their campaign promises (and perhaps…dare we say lie?), In a world where athletes flaunt the laws of the land and get off with no punishment… In a world where the commandment Thou Shalt Not Lie is interpreted as “You probably shouldn’t lie, unless you can get away with it…” In this world it is refreshing to find a high level athlete putting his honor above his pay cheque.
This past week PGA Golfer Brian Davis was in a playoff round at the Verizon Heritage tournament.  It was the golfer’s chance to win his first ever PGA tournament.  However, Davis knew what had happened when he took his shot…but did anyone else notice?  If Brian Davis kept quiet, maybe no one would catch him and he could still win.  If they did catch his infraction, Davis could plead innocent.
Brian Davis decided that his honesty was worth $400,000 to him and he reported his foul.  He had he ticked a loose reed during his backswing Sunday on the first playoff hole, calling a two-stroke penalty on himself.  Officials hadn’t noticed the incident and only after slow motion replays were viewed did anyone see that indeed Davis had broke rule 13.4 about moving a loose impediment.
With the automatic two stroke penalty, Davis conceded the playoff round to a surprised Jim Furyk.  The latter golfer went home with just over $1 million for winning the tournament.  Second place Davis got about $600,000 less because he was honest.
Fans on the TSN website were overwhelmingly impressed with Davis’ honor bound respect for the game of golf.  Comparisons were made between Davis’ level of integrity and Tiger Woods’ lack of integrity in honoring his marital vows.
An interesting fan post suggested that it wouldn’t be long before some sponsor comes along offering Davis a lucrative or (or at least semi lucrative) sponsorship deal.
Davis would have got away without telling anyone about his infraction of rule 13.4.  Why would someone give up a chance at his first ever tour win (and a $400,000 more in cash?  To some (many) people being able to look yourself in the mirror in the morning knowing your have live with integrity is more important than money.
It has been my privilege to know many compulsively honest to the core people.  One fellow thought nothing of going back to the store and giving them back the extra change that the clerk accidently gave him.  The clerk looked at him like he was an idiot for bringing back money.  One lady returned cash she had found to the police station.  No one would have ever known she had found it … except her and that was enough.
Brian Davis is not the only honest athlete out there.  The media (and media watchers) find scandals about steroids (or not) cheater (or not) more entertaining than stories of honesty and integrity.  In fact we have become a bit suspicious of people who try to promote themselves as Honest Athlete.  Before the tournament, if Brian Davis had held a news conference explaining how he was full of honesty and integrity…we would have assumed the more he (or anyone) bragged about how honest they were, the more we would wonder what were they up to?
Brian Davis did not talk about honesty and integrity, he showed it by his actions, when no one else knew except for him…he did what he had to do no matter what the monetary cost was the cost lying / cheating (even if only he knew it) was too high to pay.  These types of stories should / but won’t get more publicity…