What made Clarke's decision all the more impressive was not that he had an opportunity to bend the rules and refused, it was that he invoked the spirit rather than the letter of golf 's law. He bogeyed the hole, finished bogey, par, bogey, and lost by two strokes to Thomas Bjorn.

Even though his lie in the rough had been dramatically improved overnight, and even though a ruling allowed him to play the shot as it lay . . . he later said he could have hit a seven iron onto the green with ease . . . he chose to do what he would normally have done had no one trampled the grass down near his ball.

When cheating and gamesmanship are endemic in so many other sports, and when coaches unashamedly encourage their players to break as many rules as they can get away with, Clarke's gesture stands out like a beacon.

After he had called a penalty on himself for an infringement which no one had seen, the legendary Bobby Jones said that praising someone for playing by the rules was tantamount to praising someone for not robbing a bank.

Once when Ben Hogan was faced with a bunker shot that was so awkward it looked as if he might ground his club, an official later mentioned that he thought he was going to have to call a penalty. Hogan glowered at the official, and told him in no uncertain terms that he would have called the penalty on himself.

Clarke though went beyond the self-regulation that sets golf above so many sports. It was sportsmanship akin to Jack Nicklaus's famous decision to concede Tony Jacklin a three-foot putt on the final green of the final singles in the 1969 Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale which meant that both the game, as well as the overall match, were halved. "I don't think you would've missed that putt, but in the circumstances I would never give you the opportunity, " Nicklaus told Jacklin.

What is less well-known about the incident, however, is that several members of the America team were less than pleased with Nicklaus, believing he should never have conceded the putt with the Ryder Cup on the line.

Equally, what is certain is that not every player on the European Tour would have followed the lead which went some of the way to costing Clarke the tournament.

There were plenty of plaudits, but no one was prepared to admit that they would have taken advantage of the situation and gone straight for the green. Because while the incidence of malpractice is relatively rare, the game is most definitely not whiter than white.

Vijay Singh's two-year ban for altering his scorecard during the 1985 Indonesia Open is the most notorious example of cheating in the current era, however, Singh's case is far from isolated. In the same year, the Scottish player David Robertson was fined £20,000 for repeatedly marking his ball in the incorrect position on the green during qualifying for the British Open at Deal in Kent. Robertson was later banned from the European Tour for 20 years.

Johan Tumba, whose father Sven had been the driving force behind the expansion of golf in Sweden, was also found guilty of cheating at the European Tour qualifying school. Tumba changed two fives to fours, turning a 74 into a 72 which would have seen him gain his tour card.

He was initially banned for 10 years, which was later reduced to three years.

More recently, Mark O'Meara was accused by Jarmo Sandelin of moving his ball closer to the hole after picking up his marker during the 1997 Lancome Trophy, however, tournament officials chose not to pursue the matter.

Meanwhile, at the 2002 Portuguese Open, Maarten Lafeber and Carl Pettersson complained that Miguel Angel Martin had repeatedly improved his lie, and Martin later found the word 'cheat' daubed on his locker.

There is a more cynical view doing the rounds that Clarke's act of sportsmanship might have involved an attempt to embarrass Colin Montgomerie who was at the centre of controversy last year when a lie that appeared unplayable before a weather delay at the Indonesia Open somehow became playable when Montgomerie returned to the course the following day. Even though Montgomerie later donated his winnings from the tournament to charity, Clarke was believed to have been among a number of players angered by what had happened.

His reward for that gesture at Carton House? On Thursday at Wentworth, he dropped his ball while replacing it on the 13th green and moved the coin he was using as a marker. Initially, the referee told him there would be no penalty, but later the European Tour's chief referee, John Paramor, overturned the ruling and penalised Clarke one stroke.

Had he not been penalised, he would have made the cut, but in the end it didn't matter as he left the course to be with his wife Heather who once again has been admitted to hospital.