Golf: NZ Golf finally taking bad behaviour among young players in hand

New Zealand Golf finally got tough on discipline this week. But isn't it strange that Josh Geary, the country's best performed amateur of the past four months, is dropped from a team to play in Argentina after being heard swearing during a tournament, yet he was allowed to play at the Eisenhower Trophy in Puerto Rico after wrecking a sponsor's tent in New Plymouth when he was drunk?

Geary's removal from the team to the Juan Carlos Tailhade Championship completes (hopefully) a sorry year for ill-discipline among our best players. The message has finally got through that bad behaviour will not be condoned. The major stakeholders in New Zealand Golf, the 95,199 members whose affiliation fees provide the biggest chunk of the national body's income, deserve to be told when something untoward happens.

As president of a major golf club in Auckland I can say that had any of the players involved in May's notorious toothbrush incident on the tent-wrecking rampage been a member of our club at the time they would have been suspended immediately. We've ejected members for less. Golf lives on its ethics and standards. They must not be allowed to slip.

But New Zealand Councillors were not happy either about the way that case was handled. The message must have reached the board and the chief executive that such bad behaviour from players should not be tolerated and those responsible should be exposed publicly for it.

Hence CEO Larry Graham was extremely proactive about advising the public, via a media release, that Geary was out of the trip to South America. He should have acted just as decisively and publicly after the Taranaki affair.

As well as money from member's affiliation fees, New Zealand Golf was the beneficiary of $506,000 in government grants last year. SPARC has also committed nearly a million dollars over the next three years for High Performance programmes. Those two sources make up about half of New Zealand Golf's income and for that reason alone the national body must be transparent in its activities. It has a duty to those who are paying their way to tell them both the good news and the bad news.

This annus horribilis is almost over.

Last week's announcement of changes to the way the High Performance programme will be conducted is overdue. The standards set during the 1990s have been allowed to slip alarmingly.

Yes, the top players of today may be younger than a decade ago, but not much. Better educated and better behaved players make better golfers.

After what's happened this year, a turn in the other direction is well overdue.