Caddie's Role: There are not many professional sports that are as congenial as the game of golf. Quite frequently I have heard players, even in the heat of intense competition, marvel at playing partners' shots. "Nice shot" and "Good birdie" are pretty simple compliments, but they are meaningful in an age when sports etiquette seems to have taken a serious turn for the worse.

Though golf has had its exponents of gamesmanship and rules transgression, the sport has remained relatively untouched by scandal.

Alongside the written rules that ensure fair play in a sport that probably offers more opportunities to cheat than most - given the vast terrain a golfer may traverse in a round - you have the unwritten laws of etiquette. These have kept the civilised ethos of the game intact over the years. Little mores like keeping quiet when your playing partner is hitting and avoiding walking on a putting line maintain a healthy air of goodwill.

In a much publicised incident in the recent Irish Open at Carton House, Darren Clarke felt morally obliged to play back onto the fairway after his lie in the rough had been improved during the overnight rain delay. He could have played a shot to the green, but being a golfer of integrity he played the chip, for which he was awarded the accolade of "RBS shot of the month".

Darren, feeling he did not deserve the award just for doing what was "the right thing", donated his prize to charity, which is understandable, because he felt like someone being rewarded for not robbing a bank.

Perhaps the RBS assumed golf might be heading down the moral slippery slope taken by so many other sports.

There is a huge amount of leisure time devoted to watching sports, both live and on television. The corporate benefits of bringing clients to watch a game they would probably not have watched without the hospitality frills have brought new fans to old games.

Most recently the World Cup altered the traditional patterns to the July schedules of many. How enjoyable it all was too. But, at the end of a relatively peaceful tournament, what a sour taste was left by the headbutting of an opponent by one of the finest footballers of the modern era.

Most of us learnt at an early age that sticks and stones might break our bones but names would never hurt us.

It is part of playing sports that the opposition try to undermine you by messing with your head.

I could cite as an illustration some first-hand experience of this name- calling involving my man Retief Goosen while playing against America's finest.

When you compete at a high level, naturally you have a heightened sense of awareness. If you are competing in a reactive contact game such as soccer there is a chance you will react to the sledging. Of course this is natural, but the real professional isolates the barrage and gets on with the job in hand.

There is a theory that the reason Colin Montgomerie never converted the chances he had to win majors in the US was that he could not ignore the abuse coming from the other side of the ropes.

For his part, Retief has listened to dogs' abuse in his quest for majors and chosen to ignore it. I feel he has passed the test in the States insofar as the mud-slinging public actually respect him now. If you can beat Tiger Woods in a Presidents Cup having listened to a spectator say, "Mind you don't choke on that apple you're eating like you did in the US Open", the chances are you are mentally fairly resilient.

So for Zinedine Zidane to receive the Golden Ball award having retaliated with such violence to a bit of name-calling makes it difficult for me to respect soccer as a sport.

I do admire the Frenchman greatly as a genius with his feet - and until lately also with his head. But the lack of etiquette in soccer is at huge odds with what really matters in modern sport. I do not entirely blame the players; this culture comes from a "higher" place.

Soccer is not alone in evincing a dubious morality that seems to trickle down from the top.

The victorious Italians have been humbled by the demotion of three of their Serie A teams for match-fixing. Michael Schumacher's shenanigans in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix were despicable. In horse racing there have been serious allegations of race-fixing and crooked riding. The Tour de France has been the scene of perennial drug scandals.

The sight of Thomas Bjorn and Darren Clarke striding the picturesque fairways of Loch Lomond last weekend, smiling and chatting away amiably while locked in combat for the substantial first prize, was something that must have endeared even the most cynical viewer to the game of golf.

Being competitive does not mean we have to abandon the respect due to our fellow competitors.