Someone had to be the first, and it was Doug Barron. An announcement came his afternoon that Barron is the first player to violate the PGA Tour’s anti-doping policy. The drug that caused the violation has not been announced. Barron is facing a one-year suspension from the Tour and a $500,000 fine, in a year when he made exactly zero dollars in one PGA Tour and four Nationwide Tour starts. Had Barron made any money on Tour in 2009, that money would have gone into escrow. The severity of the penalties is clearly meant to show that the Tour means business.
Perhaps Barron’s most noteworthy moment on Tour came during the 2006 Chrysler Classic, when he removed his shirt, but left his trousers on, while hitting a shot from a water hazard. Now he’s making headlines for yet another reason other than his game.
Some fans out there might take some solace in the fact that the first player “caught” isn’t a high-profile player (to say the least). Some might even say that this shows that perhaps “performance enhancing drugs” are a non-issue in golf. Perhaps they’re right. However, when the first baseball players under the “new get tough policy” started coming to light, they were also lesser-known players; eventually, some higher-profile names did start to surface. Will the same thing happen in golf? I’m sure that most, if not all, fans hope not. However, it would be naive to say that Barron will definitely be an isolated individual case, or that a well-known player will never be caught in violation. Major-league baseball has taught us that much.
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