From a very young age, my dad and grandpa instilled into me two very important virtues.

The first was to never cross a picket line, no matter the circumstances. Even if it was just the shoeshine boy with a single picket sign at the M&M, my grandpa said we never, ever cross that line. That, he said, would be a cardinal sin.

The second thing they told me was to never cheat in golf. If I cheat in golf, they said, it would only be cheating myself. I might fool my playing partners into thinking I took a 6 instead of an 8 on that hole, but I would never fool myself.

Every time I looked into a mirror, I would be looking at a cheater.

That is probably why, in my eyes, there was never anything worse than even being accused of cheating at golf.

In the mid 1980s, a boy was accused of cheating in a junior golf tournament at the Highland View Golf Course. I don’t know if he cheated or not, but the accusation was made. Years later, that boy rose to stardom in high school sports, leading his team to victory after victory. Yet, all I could ever see was an alleged golf cheater.

Of course, you can waterboard me, and I will not tell you the name of that great athlete, who I hope really did not cheat.

I won’t even tell you the name of the Dillon golfer who cheated like Donald Trump during a high school tournament while playing with me during my senior year in high school. I can’t remember his name, but I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

On the par-3 No. 17 that day, he hit his tee shot into the sand trap, chipped out, two putted and then tried to take a par. You might forget if you had an eight or a nine on a hole, but nobody forgets the difference between a three and a four.

That instance marked at least the 10th time we suspected or caught him cheating that day.

I never heard his name after high school on the golf scene, but I can only assume he is a successful real-estate developer somewhere. But he probably struggles looking into a mirror.

If you cheat in golf, you will cheat in life. That was the premise of the 2019 book by the great Rick Reilly trying to warn us about Donald Trump. The book is titled “Commander In Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump,” and it details Trump’s long history of cheating at golf almost as bad as a North Korean dictator.

It should be noted that Trump has never directly refuted the claims of the world’s second-best sportswriter, either.

North Korean state media claims that the late supreme leader Kim Jong-il shot a 38-under-par round of 34, including up to 11 holes-in-one, the first time he ever played the gentleman’s game. That whopper makes Trump just the second-biggest cheater in the history of the game.

In the late dictator’s defense, he might not have realized his people were running ahead and planting balls in the hole for him. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing when he has his caddies make well-placed drops on his behalf.

Trump can turn an 82 into 67, and claims to win a club championship with virtually every round he plays. He does that even when U.S. state media shows his god-awful swing on its nightly broadcasts.

In the book, Reilly theorizes that 85 percent of golfers are honorable. I wonder if he takes into account the sandbagger when he makes that claim. It seems to me that more than 15 percent of golfers cheat, even if they would never cheat to the degree that the president does.

Sandbagging means that you lie about your handicap to make it look like you are a worse golfer than you are. Then you can win your flight in a tournament or get some strokes given to you when playing against golfers with a lower handicap.

I ran into some of them the first time I played a tournament at the Highland View Golf Course when I was 10 or 11 years old. My best round of golf for 18 holes was like a 110 at the time, so I was in one of the worst flights.

The winner of the flight shot something like an 87 and an 84 to win the by about 30 shots.

I did not win any merchandise money from the clubhouse in that tournament, but I learned a whole lot about humanity that weekend.

Sandbagging is not thought to be as bad as taking eight shots to hole out and then writing down a five on the scorecard, but I never understood why. People even laugh at their friends who openly sandbag to help their team win a tournament.

I would never do business with a sandbagger. Like I said, if you cheat in golf, you will cheat in life. Sandbaggers don’t cheat to pretend that they are better than they are, like Trump does. They do it to steal your money.

But, I wouldn’t play Trump for money, either

The best part about Reilly’s book about Trump cheating was that I was listening to the audiobook when I heard what Butte High junior golfer Jack Muhlestein did at the Great Falls Invitational.

While listening about the worst golf has to offer, I heard the story about the best when Jack showed the world that he is a golfer with true integrity.

After carding a 4-over-par 73 at the Anaconda Hills Golf Course, Muhlestein shot an even-par 71 at the Eagle Falls Golf Club. He would have placed fourth in the tournament that included many of the top Class AA teams.

In golf tournaments, one of your playing partners keeps your scorecard, and you keep the score of one of your playing partners. So, you must carefully check your scorecard before you sign it and turn it into the tournament officials.

Adults make mistakes on scorecards. So do high school players. And when you are done walking 18 holes in the heat for about 5 hours, it is easy to miss a mistake. So, Jack signed his card without noticing that there was a goof on it. When he did notice the mistake, he reported the error.

While golf is a game of honor, it does not reward such honor, and Jack was disqualified from the tournament. He knew that he would be disqualified when he reported the error.

Even many of the 85 percent of honorable golfers Reilly wrote about might have kept their mouth shut in that situation. Can you imagine playing that well and having the score thrown out?

Can you imagine everyone looking at the DQ next your name? It doesn’t mean you are getting a chocolate chip cookie dough blizzard, either.

Imagine if one of Hudson Luedtke’s 30-point basketball games was thrown out because he signed a scorebook that said he had one more point than he actually scored? What if one of Cayde Stajcar’s game-winning home runs was taken off the board because the official scorer made an error?

Golf, though, is like life. It is not always fair.

Yet, Jack pointed out the mistake, and he suffered the unfair consequences. It was a steep price to pay for honesty. It also tells you everything you need to know about Jack, whom I hope to meet one day soon.

Jack might not ever be a successful real-estate developer, and his honesty has probably already disqualified him from running for political office. But you better believe that Jack is the kind of guy you will want to do business with.

He doesn’t cheat in golf, so he most likely will never try to cheat in life.

I bet he wouldn’t even cross a picket line.

— Bill Foley, who might tell you the name of that sandbagger, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.