Sweater-Folder Suspended For Not Folding Enough Sweaters

Douglas Lowe reports that Scottish PGA professional David Orr has been banned from the Tartan Tour until July for not spending enough time in the shop, schmoozing up to members and listening to their captivating tales of golfing woe.

Justifying the measure, Sandy Jones, the PGA chief executive, drew a comparison with the rules of golf. “If you’re an inch out of bounds, no matter who you are, you will be punished,” he said. That’s undeniable, but the penalty for that breach is stroke and distance and not the best part of half a season in the dungeon.
Hang him in chains, that’ll teach him. When he comes out in midsummer squinting painfully at the bright light, he’ll remember he must not shirk his duty to sell more Mars bars and Titleist ProVI balls.

If the punishment fitted the crime – a rap on the knuckles and an order to make up the time this year, or perhaps a one order-of-merit tournament ban – you might imagine that would have passed without demur. But a half-season ban?

Orr should have been in the shop at the East Renfrewshire club for 30 hours a week and was some 10 hours short on average, but you can’t accuse him of being a slacker. Married with a family, he also drives taxis in Glasgow to help make ends meet in a way that a few more hours behind the counter would not.

Okay, now this isn't funny:

Yet he is more than good enough a player for the domestic Tartan Tour on which he won £36,000 last year. That, by some accounts, might be where jealousy has crept in and aggrieved fellow professionals have blown the whistle on him, and similarly on Mark Kerr, another talented player who also failed to meet the required hours.

There are suggestions of the 30-hour rule having been broken before without as much as a by your leave, but without the impact of Orr’s 2009 season.