Tour Pro: 'I am here to confess to my biggest mistake – I cheated in golf'

You won't be familiar with the golfer Justin Doeden but he will forever now be associated with his actions.

The American was playing at a PGA Tour Canada event last week when he made a mess of the last hole of his second round. After an opening three-under 68 he needed a par five to make the cut but, after taking on the green in two, he found water.

The 28-year-old then hit his fourth shot into sand and missed a short putt for a bogey, but according to Monday Q, he said that he needed to double check his card which was when erased the number and replaced it with a five after his marker left the scoring area.

Two players noticed the mistake and pointed this out and then Doeden took to Twitter to explain his, at best, erratic thinking.

Doeden said: “I am here to confess to the biggest mistake I have made in my life to date. I cheated in golf. This is not who I am. I let my sponsors down. I let my competitors down. I let my family down. I let myself down. I pray for your forgiveness.”

Had he not been found out, and his score remained at -3, it would have had a large impact on the tournament with 13 players on T61 all missing the cut. Thankfully they all came back in.

This season Doeden has made 12 starts on the Canadian Tour, making eight cuts with five top 25s and one second place.

When asked this week what he made of the incident two-time major winner, Bernhard Langer, had a degree of sympathy for Doeden.

“I don’t know what circumstances this player is living under and what’s going on and whether that one stroke would improve his life dramatically, I have no idea. I can’t imagine it,” the German said. “But there’s tremendous stress out there, a lot of pressure. Some of these people, they have family, they have young kids and they live from this pay check to the next one, so it can be very tempting.”

Fellow major winner Padraig Harrington was also able to see the bigger picture.

“I suppose that’s why we have in real life, why we have a court system and a judge because, you know, I’m sitting here thinking, it makes no sense. There must be a reason why this has happened, is this poor person under some outside pressure or something or why would they do this?

“It’s a very, very hard thing but it’s not a clear-cut thing of throwing the book at him because I know — and this is the horrible truth of it — we know players who have broken the rules over the years, and I talk to players who have because I like the person, and then I don’t talk to other players who have because I don’t like the person.

"So even though both of them have broken the rules, my judgment falls more much based on what I think of the person, which is terrible, isn’t it? But that’s who we are as human beings."