SALTMAN COULD BE COLD-SHOULDERED ON EUROPEAN TOUR

FROM THE SPORT.SCOTSMAN.COM WEBSITE
http://sport.scotsman.com/golf/
By Martin Dempster
The last five months have been a bit of a roller-coaster for Elliot Saltman, the career high of earning a European Tour card at the same time as one of his brothers being book-ended by two lows that will almost certainly besmirch the rest of his career.
A disqualification from the M2M Russian Challenge Cup last September after he was accused of wrongly marking his ball by two playing partners left a dark cloud hanging over his head and now, following a lengthy wait, the 28-year-old has been found guilty by his peers of cheating.
Despite being confident he could clear his name, a disciplinary hearing in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday decided "unanimously" that Saltman had committed a "serious breach" of the rules and handed him a three-month playing ban from both the European Tour and the Challenge Tour.
Saltman has 28 days to decide whether to lodge an appeal against the ban, which is due to start immediately, but the decision taken by chairman Thomas Bjorn and his fellow members of the tournament players' committee is significant in itself.
The Scot, who turned professional in 2007 and was subsequently joined in the paid ranks by his two brothers, Lloyd and Zack, certainly isn't alone in being accused of cheating on the Tour in recent years but, unlike some other cases, sufficient evidence was deemed to be available to take action against him.
He is the first player on the European circuit to be handed a ban in nearly 20 years and, no matter whether the punishment might be shorter than some people expect for such an offence, a so-called cheating tag is almost impossible to shake off in golf.
Johan Tumba, the Swede handed the last ban, ten years in his case for altering his scorecard at the Qualifying School, has never been seen again on Tour and the same goes for David Robertson, the Dunbar man who got 20 years, as well as a whopping fine, for marking his ball wrongly during qualifying for an Open Championship.
(Editor's note: Robertson was eventually reinstated as an amateur and did play in tournaments for a spell).
With only three months to serve on the sidelines, Saltman is in a different boat to them in one sense but what kind of welcome can he expect from fellow players when he returns? Lukewarm at best would be my guess, though persona non grata also springs to mind.

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Editor's Note: If Elliot Saltman needs any encouragement to rise above this incident and have a very successful pro career, he should be inspired by the career of Vijay Singh who won three Major titles, was ranked World No 1 and later elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame, despite having his early years in Fiji and Borneo besmirched by allegations of cheating.
From "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"
Two years after turning professional, in 1984, Singh won the Malaysian PGA Championship. However, his career was plunged into crisis after he was suspended from the Asian Tour in 1985 over allegations he doctored his scorecard. It was alleged that he lowered his score from one over to one under in order to make the cut, but Singh denies this, saying that in any case, it should only have resulted in disqualification from the event rather than a ban.