Nobody likes a liar. And nobody hates liars more now than Kitsap Sun reporter Jeff Graham.
On August 16, Graham wrote and published a story on how four different players hit a hole-in-one at the same local golf course. John Armstrong, Shawn Cucciardi, Mike Hancock and Cris Larsen were the four golfers who had supposedly all made the prestigous hole-in-one.
Graham spoke multiple times with Larsen, as well as with Cucciardi, and reported what he heard from them in a timely manner. The story ran and all was well until the editor of the Kitsap Sun, David Nelson,happened to go to the Wednesday morning Rotary Club meeting that golfer Cris Larsen was at.
That was were Larsen announced during an impromptu speech that he had fooled the newspaper, and that the “holes-in-one” were done by physically rolling balls in the hole themselves. It was all a hoax.
“My jaw dropped, but I stayed composed,” Nelson said in a phone interview. “It was like I got gut-punched.”
The next day, the Sun published an article by Graham, exposing the truth and showing how truly annoyed and pissed off Graham was about the whole incident.
He wrote about how his trust with the golf course was severed and how he now will have to call into question all the information he receives.
This incident also brings up a point: should journalists always be so trusting with their sources? Should Graham have double-checked with witnesses that the hole-in-ones were true? We know golf is one of the easiest sports to lie about your score or how you are doing, but the golfers should have had some decency to speak the truth. Now nobody is a winner in this situation
