What on earth is happening in the douce world of golf?

Hard on the heels of the lurid tales of Tiger Woods’ secret playboy life comes the full extent of John Daly’s misdemeanours amounting to five suspensions and 21 citations for not trying his hardest.

For anyone who has bothered to keep count, that’s more than the number of Woods’ alleged mistresses but probably much fewer than the number of times he has thrown a golf club in temper in the last few years.

And while we’re at it, there’s the issue of spitting that has always been on the tip of Woods’ tongue so to speak and has been brought to the fore again by American golf’s rising star Dustin Johnson’s habit of expectorating all over the course and in front of the television cameras which, incidentally, brings it into your own living room.

Golf has long been hailed as a game for gentlemen and ladies – who, by the way, seem to be scandal and 
spit-free for the time being at least – and a game of honour where players call penalties on themselves and lead lives of great integrity as pillars of society and paragons of virtue.

“You might as well praise me for not robbing a bank,” said amateur legend Bobby Jones after being praised to the heavens for calling a penalty shot on himself because his ball moved so slightly in the rough that no-one else saw it during the 1925 US Open.

The way things are going these days you might be criticised less for robbing a bank than you would be for being caught with your trousers down once or 18 times too often. Nowadays, if you believe everything that is tweeted or twittered – is there a difference between the two? – we seem to have golfers who are pillocks of society and pariahs of virtue.

Could it be that golf has gone to the dogs, will never be the same again and will become like football, rampant in cheating with fans booing and chanting during shots, and those unsavoury incidents that always seem to happen outside kebab shops? Or that particularly delightful habit of closing one nostril with the forefinger then, with a mighty snort, clearing the nasal matter out of the other. Lovely. That would look great in high definition among the azaleas at Amen Corner live from Augusta National.

Well excuse me, but didn’t Jones have a bit of a temper in his early days before he grew up and founded Augusta where no lesser a person than Jack Nicklaus believes Woods will appear for the Masters which is less than five weeks away and possibly end his self-imposed exile before then.

American Ryder Cup player Tommy Bolt from a bygone era was so notorious for throwing clubs that he offered the advice: “Always throw your club in the direction you are going so that you don’t have to waste any time going to retrieve it.”

And haven’t some of the top players always been prone to a spot of extra-curricular nookie when they are on the road? According to those in the know there were one or two who saw what happened to Woods and muttered inwardly: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

It’s also a matter of perception. Jean-Christophe Babin, the chief executive of one of Woods’ sponsors, Tag Heuer, is reported to have said that while the world No.1’s image has been removed from advertising in the US, its use has increased in China because his esteem there has risen. “In China, by tradition, your success is measured by your number of mistresses,” he said. Hail the Chinese Tiger.

A big difference between now and bygone days is that the stars of yore got away with it because communication was not as sharp. These days hand-held gizmos can take pictures and put them and comments into the public domain right there and then. There is no hiding place, and the temptation to tweet or twitter before second thoughts set in is always there, as Daly well knows.

He responded to the breaking of the story of his full bad-boy record by tweeting the telephone number of the journalist concerned, an act that has prompted some 100 calls, many of them with richly offensive messages, prompting American golf writers to urge the PGA Tour to ban Daly for his trouble.

If that happens we might see him back in Europe where he was given sanctuary last year while on his last PGA Tour ban that was issued after an allegedly drunken episode when he spent a night in a cell in North Carolina.

While none of this is the kind of behaviour you would like to see copied by impressionable juniors at your club who look up to such players, neither Woods nor Daly has fallen foul of the big one in golf.

You can cheat on your wife and more or less be welcome back into the game, and if you are as big a star as Woods you can spit and throw clubs to your heart’s content and even build up a lucratively false image, but you can’t cheat on the golf course and get away with it.

For as long as the basic principles of playing the ball as it lies and respecting other players on the course is upheld I would hazard a guess that golf’s reputation will remain largely unsullied.

One measure will be the reaction of crowds in the circus that will ensue when Woods returns. If his loyal and hear-no-evil caddie Steve Williams, who is still insisting he knew nothing about Woods’ other life, can keep everyone still and silent on the backswing then all will be well. Quiet please.