What if you get a hole in one….on a Mulligan? Let’s just say…
You are golfing with friends at the Tubac Country Club. It’s your turn on the tee, a 165-yard par three. You address the ball confidently, visualizing the perfect six-iron shot. Your swing seems true, at first, but it yanks left into a patch of mesquite trees, careening off one, then another in a hollow and dispiriting cacophony. The shot is so bad, your friends urge you to do it over. “Mulligan” they shout in unison.
Your second shot—the mulligan—soars into the air, straight and true — a thing of beauty. It lands 12 feet in front of the cup and rolls gently, but unerringly, in. As you stand there, stunned, your friends scream, “Hole in one! Hole in one!”
So, what’s the question?
Is it a breach of integrity to claim a hole in one if you got it on a mulligan?
What can we discern about practicing integrity from this scenario?
A mulligan is a privilege bestowed by one’s golfing partners, or simply arrogated to oneself, when your first shot is deemed uncharacteristically bad, as if the golfer had been temporarily possessed by a malevolent spirit. Invariably, the next shot is better, if rarely on this order of magnitude. That is the point of a mulligan: to erase the sting of uncharacteristic incompetence and provide a second chance to improve.
Of course, what is lost in the self-deception of this genteel custom is the realization that if you were that good in the first place, such a discrepancy between shots would not exist. So, a Mulligan is premised on an implicit admission of, well… incompetence.
All this is forgotten in the delirium of excitement as you sink your second shot. Your mind soars, like the ball itself, toward an inflated view of your own competence, the same way we inflate the power of our intuition when it turns out right, forgetting the countless times it wasn’t.
The simplicity of this story displays the way breaches of integrity germinate into full-blown crises in our culture. By the illusion of inconsequence we ignore duties to achieve what we want, whether telling a white lie to evade an obligation (PRT, November), ignoring e-mails because we’re too busy (PRT, December) or accepting a free meal courtesy of the company expense account of a friend (PRT, January). We commit these breaches, assured of our own moral soundness, even as we lament the collapse of integrity all around us.
But is this really lying? Isn’t it harmless puffing? People don’t really expect truthfulness when boasting about a golf score, do they? True, this is golf. They call it that because all the other four-letter words were taken. Still, people do have a reasonable expectation that you will not dispense with reality altogether and substitute a monumental achievement in place of a considerably lesser one.
When you mark “1” on your scorecard, you have not only mischaracterized your score, but debased your actual accomplishment. It was, after all, a phenomenal shot; you did hit the ball into the hole with one stroke. This achievement has been calculated by golf experts to occur once every 33,000 swings. Some pros have never done it. And, a birdie for most ordinary duffers is still pretty good. It’s just not a hole in one.
So why lie about it? Why not appreciate the great shot that it was? Why not tell the truth rather than succumbing to yet another reason not to tell it? The duties of integrity are fulfilled through practice. That’s why we call integrity a practice. You get better by practicing. Just like golf. Fulfilling the duty of truthfulness in small things promotes the inclination to do so on the big things.
What’s the answer to the question?
Claiming a hole in one after a mulligan is a breach of the duty of truthfulness.
So, the next time (you make a great shot after a mulligan–in golf or in life–) ask yourself: Why lie about it? It’s not something to be embarrassed about. Appreciate your accomplishment and your skill in making the right adjustments after your first attempt.
And, remember the law of small things: Exaggeration, although seemingly harmless, fuels the illusion of inconsequence.
Stu Brody is a student and teacher of philosophy, law, politics, and other fields related to personal decision-making. He is nearing completion on a book entitled: “The Law of Small Things: Integrity, Authenticity and Freedom in American Life” which examines misconceptions about the meaning of integrity and outlines how we can maintain a more consistent practice, by focusing on small things.