I see Patrick Reed, the polarising American golfer is on his way to way court. Something about being defamed by TV commentator and analyst Brandel Chamblee.

Don’t want to interfere with natural justice here, but it’s hard to believe anybody can do a better job of defaming Patrick than Patrick himself.

He’s benchmark, a standout villain, caught on video raking bunkers with his sand wedge, picking up “plugged” balls before any rules official had the chance to review the lie, tinkering with the rough, all while topping a list the players that his (former) PGA tour peers would be “least likely to help in a bar fight”.

Quality stuff, but God Bless Patrick. It would be boring if all the golfers were the same, wouldn’t it? How, for instance, would we know what a great bloke Adam Scott was if everybody behaved just like Adam Scott? We wouldn’t.

The Reed defamation case, I hasten to add, is one of a few intriguing legal matters currently before the court.

I’ve got it right up there along side “700-drink girl suing Nick Kyrgios” for the irreparable damage he caused, calling out her behaviour at Wimbledon this year. Can’t wait to see where that one finishes up, and what evidence is presented at the hearing – 700 – that’s a lot of plastic cups.

Also intriguing, on the other side of the globe , Donald Trump, very very unhappy about the FBI’s late night intrusion into his modest 38 bedroom abode in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Another matter heading for the courts. How much do we miss The Trumpster, and the nightly news entertainment he provided?

So many comedians out of work since he didn’t lose the election he lost.

But let’s stick with “Prat-trick”, because his legal matter revolves around something that captivates us all – the notion of cheating.

Of all the professional athletic endeavours, golf stands alone as the sport least likely to produce cheats. It is after all, a game of self assessment. Self regulation.

As Arnie Palmer once famously remarked, when praised for calling a penalty on himself, “you might as well congratulate me for not robbing a gas station”. Yes, golfers take this “gentlemen of honour /women of honour/non-binary of honour very seriously. With the exception of Donald Trump’s 8-handicap, there’s no room for it in the game. Cheat in golf, cheat in life. It’s a pretty simple equation.

My question, your honour – why is it in this day and age, that there are so many other sports still riddled with “cheats?” Do they really think they can get away with it, technology being as precise, and as invasive as it is today?

You may not have heard, but a few years ago, a couple of Australian cricketers conspired to rough up the red ball a little in a Test match in South Africa. Can you imagine their surprise when the image of sandpaper (#180–#220 grit I believe, on the strength of the close up) were projected onto the 20m x 20m screen at the ground?

And Cam Bancroft’s fingernails – they were quite long… why didn’t he just use those for a little subtle scuffing of the cherry? Save the team management a trip to the local Newlands hardware?

Sandpaper-gate of course was deemed to be one of the more heinous sporting crimes of the past century, and sure, it was certainly an unedifying moment in Australian sport.

But if we reflect for a moment on the motive – swaying the odds in your team’s favour – how does it differ from your average non-descript rugby league back-rower, or centre, or halfback, jumping around madly on a Saturday afternoon, claiming to have scored a try when they know they’ve lost the ball over the tryline?

Camera 11, angle 3, in slow mo, let’s have a look at it again.. yes, the player has clearly lost the ball in the tackle. We have a decision – you can project the bright red Kentucky Fried Chicken Logo onto the screen one more time.. NO TRY!

Folks, it’s 2022, not 1982. There’s closed circuit camera vision of you arriving in the car park, climbing out of your sponsored vehicle. Walking through the tunnel. Warming up in the dressing shed.

Do you really think they’re not heavily scrutinising what’s going on, on the field? Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. From the comfort of our lounge rooms, we can see sweat blisters, receding hairlines, unshaven chins.

Part of me wishes that sport could return to the “good old days” when there were no camera closeups. We were spectators, instead of big screen analysts. We didn’t know what we didn’t know.

Now, we’re over-informed “experts” with too much information, and often, not enough knowledge.

I’m not suggesting we go right back to the dark ages – to the 1904 Olympics in St Louis for instance, when 20-year-old New Yorker Fred Lorz was declared the winner of the Marathon, only to be disqualified when it was discovered he covered part of the 26 mile journey by vehicle, having hitched a ride with a lorry driver.

Sports Bet, Blue Bet, Bet 365, Ladbrokes, Boom Bet, Uni Bet, and the like have too much at stake and contribute too much to professional sports’ bottom line to let those sort of shenanigans go unchecked.

But the risk is with all that modern technology, we’re going to eventually weed out the “characters”, the scallywags who make sport so interesting. The rule benders rather the rule breakers.

Legendary Australian jockey Mel Schumacher, for example, who in 1961 was filmed grabbing the leg of rival hoop Tommy Hill over the final 50 yards of the AJC Derby at Randwick in 1961.

Was that cheating? The stewards thought so – they banned Schumacher for life, though his punishment was later reduced to five years. “The Shoe” probably just saw the leg pull as “one of the tricks of the trade”. A bloody good one.

It’s interesting to note, that was more than 60 years ago, when grainy footage, shot from 400 yards away, provided sufficient evidence to terminate a sporting career.

And now the cameras are so close, we can count the grains of sand that Patrick Reed pushed away with his lob wedge in the Bahamas. Allegedly.

What chance do the real cheats have? None.

Part of me hopes Reed wins his billion-dollar law suit, if only because of the ammunition it will provide the army of experts, those with all the information, but not necessarily a lot of knowledge.

Just as long as we maintain the great divide – the heroes and the villains.

Professional sport would be boring if it didn’t have both.