Using an inflated handicap to unfairly gain strokes in competition is nothing new for golf. Part of the fun of the earliest club competitions back in Britain was the pretournament dinner, at which the official "assigner of the odds" often opened the floor to debate about his judgments. Colorful bickering, cajoling and outright groveling ensued.

These days, alas, sandbagging is more surreptitious. All the practitioner needs to do is avoid entering a few low scores into the computer, or subtly manipulate the scores he or she does post, such as by deliberately missing short putts that don't factor into winning a hole. In the absence of sufficient peer pressure and a diligent pro-shop staff or handicap committee, that handicap becomes official.

Although "sandbagging" can be interpreted wherever the imagination wants to take you (see the accompanying illustration), the term is generally thought to derive from old English gangs, who used rolled-up bags of sand to physically knock out rivals. Poker used the expression before golf, to describe a betting strategy in which a player with a strong hand lures opponents into wagering ever-bigger sums by acting as if he has nothing to work with. Then he knocks them out. In poker, however, ploys like that are the essence of the game. In golf, they're cheating.

Luckily, a few modern tools have come along that can help suss out sandbaggers and allow tournament directors to deal with them in an objective manner. They are based primarily on the work of Dean Knuth. These days he designs intelligence systems for the military, the CIA and Homeland Security, but for 16 years ending in 1997 Knuth was director of handicapping for the U.S. Golf Association. There he refined and improved the USGA's handicapping system. He also invented the Slope system for rating courses, which is now used around the world.