The 19^th Hole

June 24, 2007

Straight and True

At the Travelers Championship this past week, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem announced that the Tour was exploring and likely to implement a drug testing policy.  Further, Finchem called for all professional golf tours to unite and come up with a single, unified drug-testing regimen for professionals.  To the untrained eye, this seems like a revolutionary announcement that acknowledges the realities of the game at the highest level.

In all reality, though, the PGA Tour is the last to the party when it comes to the realization that drug enhancement is a potential reality in the sport and needs to be measured.  The LPGA Tour was first to announce a decision to implement a fairly aggressive drug testing policy starting next season.  Then, in recent weeks, the European Tour unveiled a similar policy that it would be developing.

Now, all of a sudden, Commissioner Finchem has come to his senses and realizes that certain “realities” make drug testing a necessary function of the PGA Tour.  It seems a little too convenient given the timing of some recent events.

First, the obvious reason is that everyone else is doing it.  In recent months, the European Tour leadership and a number of its players that have flocked to the States have remarked that the European Tour needs to work harder to unify other tours around the world and present a genuine alternative to players as a place to play professional golf at the highest level.  The stated goal is to hypothetically align tours from across half of the Western and all of the Eastern Hemisphere to create a global tour.  This tour would attract large sponsor capital (read: money) and dramatically increase purses. 

All of this would be done knowing two things.  One would be that the reason the European Tour has experienced “talent drain” over the life of its existence is the promise of higher purses in the United States.  If this new Euro Tour could present a reasonable comparison in terms of purses, many Europeans would return home to play.  Secondly, many US PGA Tour stalwarts play a number of off-season events overseas because of their promise of large appearance fees – a policy that the PGA Tour forbids.  If the Euro Tour could generate a reasonable monetary alternative, then many US PGA Tour players would have a more difficult decision when it came to tournament commitments during the regular season.

Now, throw in the added wrinkle of the recent announcement of a drug testing policy on the European Tour.  Through the policy, the European Tour, under director George O’Grady, positions itself as being on the cutting edge of the game by recognizing that the nature of the sport has changed.  The USGA has clamped down on what technology can do for ball distance, and the impending groove regulations likely to take effect in 2009 will further limit the capacity of golf equipment to level the playing field. 

Despite these regulation realities, the professional game will not simply return to a finesse game of shot shaping and creativity.  The power game is here to stay.  There will remain pressure to play a power style game because courses will still play to absurd distances with smaller fairways and deeper rough.  With a very limited set of options from an equipment standpoint – perhaps even a lessening of those options – a player has few alternatives.  One of those is drug enhancement.

In all honesty, the likelihood of professional golfers juicing up is low.  The impact of drug enhancement is fairly unknown and may be minimal.  (Do you think for a second that Angel Cabrera is on ‘roids?)  The point of drug testing policies in professional golf is to address the accusation that it is possible.  Golf is a game billed as one filled with integrity and honesty and it has now been called into question.  Professionals want to verify to the world that they embody the game’s hallmark characteristics. 

Now that the European Tour is appealing to that mindframe – and other goals – the PGA Tour must respond in kind.  The reality, then, is that the competition is improving and now the PGA Tour must respond.

Ryan Ballengee is host of The 19th Hole Golf Show, found at The Golf Newsnet.com.  Having graduated from the University of Maryland in 2004 and 2006, Ballengee brings the perspective of the younger golf fan to the microphone and his columns.  Over the nearly five years he has been broadcasting and writing, Ballengee has developed a reputation for a unique interviewing style that asks both the difficult and fun questions. You can also get The 19th Hole on the go through podcasting by clicking here The Golf Newsnet Contact Ryan via e-mail at the19thholeshow@hotmail.com.