Kent was part of a cadre of aggressive businessmen who had left the dominant New York Insurance Company a few years before to form the North American Insurance Company, startling the conservative industry with a charter that gave them concentrated powers of governance. Kent, the secretary/treasurer, was at the hub of the successful company that resulted. He was accustomed to starting battles and winning them — until he met Charlie Bruckhauser.

“[In] the play of the club championship on Aug. 15,” Kent reported, “I had a caddy named Charles Bruckhauser. I believe he is eleven years old. We got along without trouble until the last hole.”

After the “trouble,” Charlie was called before the country club’s board of governors. His testimony was secret, but according to reports, he testified that at the end of the round, he made mention of “irregularities” in Mr. Kent’s play.

“The boy,” Kent said, picking up the story, “demanded that I give him a tip of $5. He said that should I refuse he’d report that I had been cheating. ‘If you do, you’re a damned liar,’ I told him.”

According to Charlie, it was at that point that Kent responded “by choking and beating me.”

“If he says I touched him,” Kent said, “he’s not telling the truth.”

READ MORE: 13 WAYS TO CHEAT AT GOLF AND HOW GUILTY YOU SHOULD FEEL ABOUT THEM

The board investigated for two weeks. The standoff at the swank country club was national news. Charlie held his ground. So did William Kent, but ultimately, he was judged to have slapped Charlie out of frustration. The penalty was suspension from the club — a calamitous reproach. He never recovered his reputation and in a decision that may have been related, he moved out of Illinois within a year. Charlie, meanwhile, was likewise banished from Westmoreland, without a reason cited. Extortion may have been one of the charges; it’s a cruel form of commerce, even though its use by an 11-year-old only burnishes the image of greater Chicago in the 1920s. The boy had tripped, however purposely, on the fact that cheating was accommodated within the universe of weekend golf.

More recently, a player from Galveston, Texas, commented on that lurking reality. “The vast majority of golfers are strictly honest. The one or two percent of cheaters stand out like a wart on a beauty’s chin,” he railed. “Do I cheat at golf? Of course not. The only time I do is when I am almost sure that I won’t be caught.”

In respect to the phenomenon, the Westmoreland Country Club was not unusual, except as the venue for one of the most vivid confrontations in American history: Kent v. Bruckhauser. One was brawny, rich, and practiced in the ways of the world. The other was a scrawny urchin with a bemused look in his eye: a disparate match-up, even in sporting America. Charlie was 11 when he laid waste to Kent. It was the power that glows around cheating that brought Kent down, after the kid had succeeded in swiping it away from him.

Excerpted from Cheaters Always Win: The Story of America by J.M. Fenster. Copyright 2019. Available from Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.