Mark O'Meara may have slept easier last night in Hamburg with the nightmare of controversy in Paris last year seemingly now just a bad dream gone away.But if his playing-partners, England's Barry Lane and South African Retief Goosen, have seen "that video", they may keep a surreptitious eye out when he comes to mark his ball in the European Tournament Players Championship (Deutsche bank SAP Open) First round today.The Us masers champion has admitted he may have placed his ball wrongly in the final round at the 15th green last September on his way to picking up the £116,000 Lancome Trophy. But it was all an honest mistake , he maintained yesterday after warming up for the £1.1m event in Hamburg, the second richest so far on the European Tour.Evidence of O'Meara respotting his ball in front of where he had marked it, had been to him via a video tape during the week of the Masters and the story hit the headlines a month ago. Th European Tour decided not to - disqualify because the tournament was over and done too long. But now he was in Europe playing and explaining.His confession, though, did not prevent Sweden's Jarmo Sandelin, beaten in second place by a stroke in Paris last year, making what appears to be the last call for O'Meara to return the trophy.Said O'Meara: "There's no question that the video shows there's a possibility that I might have mismarked my ball, turned it around, put it Back down - in my view it might be a little bit different from the camera view - so could I have made a mistake?"Obviously it could have been a slight mistake, a miscalculation, whatever, but it's not like it was initially dramatic thing that was done wrong by any means. Everybody in the game of golf tries to play with great integrity, myself included."I have the utmost support from the Us players who know me. I played in Dallas and had maybe 70 or 80 players come up to me and each one of them said, 'hey, we've played golf with you. Not one time has your reputation come into question with us.'"were my intentions to try to bend the rules? Never, nor have they ever been that way. I think I've conducted myself honourably on and off the course. This was a little bit of a blemish but I'm trying to meet it with the utmost honesty.
If I felt in any way I tried to 'jimmy' the round, I would say you can have the trophy.While triple major winner Nick Price, also in Hamburg this week for the event, maintained O'Meara "had never been a fudger; this is a one-off," Sandelin remained unimpressed: "I am happy he has admitted the mistake," said the Swede, "but of course he would because it is on tape. I feel very strongly about what is right and what is wrong, though. He was wrong and if I had been wrong I would never keep a trophy."Mark O'Meara has been playing for years, he's one of the best putters in the world and he's marked his ball about 50,000 times. That should be enough for a player of his quality to know what is right and what is wrong."But I don't think I can do anything more about this, it will be asked why I haven't. If I do go up to him he could complain that I'm carrying all this on months after the event. I feel my hands are tied now."That begs the question, what happens if the two are thrown together this week by the whims and fancies of golf's numbers game?
