And here is why the PGA Tour’s drug policy is a crapshoot at best.

Thanks to a rather eye-opening piece from Lawrence Donegan of The Guardian, it isn’t outside of the realm of possibility – and is perhaps quite likely – that there have been some positive drug tests that have gone unpunished since the PGA Tour implemented their policy.

According to allegations from Jeffrey Rosenblum, the lawyer for recently-suspended player Doug Barron, the tour singled out his client while “ignoring a number of other alleged positive tests” for recreational drugs, most notably cocaine and marijuana.

Obviously, the PGA Tour’s lips are sealed but earlier this year, Finchem addressed the issue of recreational drugs on his circuit and admitted “we may have had some test results that trouble”.

“But we don’t publicize those,” Finchem added. “We treat those as conduct unbecoming. I’m not saying this has happened or not, I’m just saying what the process is. If we get a test like that, we will consider it conduct unbecoming, and what are our choices? We can suspend a player, we can fine a player, we can do both of those and put a player into treatment.”

So using illegal drugs is conduct unbecoming? Since when? From where I sit, it’s a crime. If you get pulled over by a cop with a bag of pot or an eight-ball of cocaine, you’re getting served with something a little more serious than “conduct unbecoming.” It’s called a promise to appear, and that is if you don’t get tossed in the Crowbar Motel first.

So Barron, a journeyman in every sense of the word, gets banished to the sidelines for a year for using beta blocker Propranolol and testosterone that were prescribed by a physician to treat a medical condition after asking, and being denied, what is known as a therapeutic exemption? And yet Mr. __________, if he so chooses, can go downtown and buy a dime bag the night before the opening round, knowing if he gets pinched it will be kept very hush-hush and he will get what amounts to a slap on the wrist.

How the heck does that make any sense at all? The answer, of course, is it doesn’t.

Seems to me the PGA Tour may want to take a close look at its list of banned substances.

In my years in this business working closely with hundreds and hundreds of professional golfers, many of whom have moved on to win on the PGA and Nationwide Tours, I can state categorically that there is recreational drug use in professional golf, just as there is in any professional sport. It is not my place to point fingers, but suffice to say it exists, although only within a very small majority of a tour membership. It’s just a matter of players rolling the dice that they won’t get caught.

Or, even if they do, betting it won’t be made public.

If it turns out there have been positive drug tests and yet Barron was the first scapegoat to get a suspension, it’s no wonder he’s hired a lawyer to go after the tour.

Talk about conduct unbecoming.