"It will be remembered as a preventable breach, briefly incendiary, with a short shelf life."

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Larry Dorman offers his take on the Scott McCarron apology before delving in the incredibly rare accusations of cheating in golf and the even rarer uses of the C-word.

McCarron’s apology was not surprising because of the stigma the word cheating carries in golf, a world in which adherence to the rules has always been a fundamental precept. Public accusations of breaches are rare and guarded, and are usually followed by an apology by the accuser.

There have been three public kerfuffles over rules violations in recent years. In one particularly nasty exchange at the 2009 British Open, Sandy Lyle — upset that he had been passed over as the 2010 European Ryder Cup captain — dredged up an accusation about a questionable drop four years earlier made by his fellow Scotsman Colin Montgomerie, the current Ryder Cup captain.

Lyle said Montgomerie’s drop at the 2005 Indonesian Open was “a form of cheating” and did not say Montgomerie was a cheat. After first claiming his words were taken out of context, Lyle apologized to Montgomerie two days later.

In one of the more well-known accusations made on the PGA Tour, Tom Watson accused Gary Player of removing a rooted leaf from behind his golf ball to improve his lie during the first televised Skins Game in 1983. Watson was livid, but he never used the words cheat or cheating.