Shotgun Start: Drug ban, lost opportunities, as the Euros turn
CBSSports.com staffer Steve Elling and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle sports writer and columnist Scott Michaux take a scattershot look at another unusually newsy week in the world of golf. And you thought the season was winding down, right?
| The first player to run afoul of the new PGA Tour drug policy has been benched for a year. What were your impressions of how the issue was handled and what it means for the game? | |
| Steve Elling | Scott Michaux |
 In a way, it's a minor relief for those associated with the game that a journeyman like Doug Barron, who lost his card three years ago and has bounced around since, was the first to test positive, rather than a more relevant player. It didn't stain golf's reputation, though it certainly soiled it some. Remember, the professional game's top brass long has assured us that nobody was taking performance-enhancing drugs, even though it's assumed (the tour-crafted statement from Barron was vague to say the least) he dosed himself accidentally. Still, some of us wonder what will happen when a prominent golfer tests positive for drugs. Tennis star Andre Agassi has admitted in his recent book that he had taken a snootful of meth and lied to a tennis panel to escape punishment. Whether tennis truly wanted to bench him is anybody's guess, because it would have created an unbelievable you-know-what-storm. But Agassi never faced the consequences for his actions. In some ways, the fact that the tour benched Barron and publicly outed him as promised when the testing program was announced was reassuring. But as with tennis, we'd never know if they buried a positive test of a star player, would we? Given professional golf's distaste for anything remotely resembling bad news, now that there's been a positive test, there will always be rumors and suspicion. |  Performance enhancing? Have you seen Barron's record lately? The guy hasn't broken par in more than a year. He's made one $1,950 check in his past 16 tournament starts dating back to June 2008. Not exactly Barry Bonds in soft spikes. If this is "enhanced," I'd hate to see how Barron performs clean. What bugs me about this policy is the secrecy behind it. What is it that Barron tested positive for? It could be any number of things based on the lack of any incriminating details in the terse PGA Tour release. Unless Barron reveals it himself, nobody will ever know, and we're left to nothing but speculation. There's no transparency at all, just like the opaque way the tour likes to keep all of its disciplinary dirty laundry. Beyond the sketchy nature of the whole disclosure, what was most disturbing was the tour's sense of timing. Dropping this notice in everybody's inbox just a couple hours before Jose Maria Olazabal, Lanny Wadkins, Christy O'Connor and President Dwight Eisenhower were inducted in a ceremony at the World Golf Hall of Fame was utterly myopic. Stealing the thunder of the most important day of the year to the tour's St. Augustine, Fla., neighbor shows poor judgment. Considering nobody was expecting an anti-doping perpetrator, it seems the news could have waited another day out of respect for the Hall of Fame and its honorees. |
| Here's a general topic near and dear to your hearts. On Monday, the PGA Tour elected to trim the field at the Pebble Beach event from 180 to 156 in 2010, eliminating a possible start early in the year for Q-schoolers and Nationwide grads. It's a move designed to decrease the unendurable six-hour rounds with amateur partners that had led to an exodus of top players over the years, but doesn't it also eliminate a key early-season start for some less-heralded guys? | |
| Steve Elling | Scott Michaux |
| Technically, the AT&T event isn't transitioning to a limited-field event, but it sure feels like it. Sure, Pebble Beach had become an organizational nightmare, spread over three courses separated by such vast acreage that shuttle rides are required to connect the sites. The timing of the trim feels even more brutal, coming just two days after the Viking Classic was rained out, costing the bubble guys on the money list a crucial event down the stretch. This is a tough move to rip, since the Pebble event was a logistics headache. But it feels like players trying to retain, or establish, a foothold are losing yet another playing opportunity at a time in the year when few are available. Who was it who said they hate limited-field events as a rule? Right, it was Scott. And you said it just last week. By the way, of the 17 victories Tiger Woods has amassed over the past three years, nine have come in tournaments with 120 players or fewer. The fewer players, the better his chances, no? | True enough, but Tiger's chances of winning at Pebble Beach would require him actually teeing it up. The AT&T is off his regular rotation, though he could make an exception next year for the opportunity to preview the U.S. Open venue. Shortening the interminable pro-am rounds (and trading up from Poppy Hills for Monterey's Shore Course) would enhance that possibility. While I'm a big fan of full-field events and giving Q-school qualifiers every at-bat they can get, trimming the tee sheet to 156 isn't a short field by any means. Have you seen the names of the players who make up the last 24 spots? Do we really need more playing ops for Bobby Clampett? Anybody with any kind of reasonable tour status should be able to get a place in the top 156 at Pebble. Most years there will be plenty of "name guys" like Tiger willing to give them a chance. |
| There's some cracking crazy news from abroad, where it has been entertainingly reported that the rift between European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie and Ian Poulter has never been wider. Can the Euros possibly survive the strife to regain the Cup in Wales next fall? | |
| Steve Elling | Scott Michaux |
| I've gotten in hot water with the European press corps in the past for picking at their curious publishing tactics, but this is one of the most delicious stories I have read in weeks. Monty is said to hate Poulter, who won last week in Singapore, and the reverse seems to hold true, too. It's hard to explain to Americans how big the Ryder is overseas, where it approaches a manic obsessions in some circles, hence the incessant coverage, even when the Cup competition is 11 months away. This is a classic example, a beauty of a compendium of all the perceived slights between the pair, just as Poulter had won for the first time in three years in Europe. The funniest part is, Monty and Poulter have been shredded and poked more than any other pair who will don the European colors in Wales(OK, maybe Sergio Garcia is on that list, too), and it shouldn't bother either much. Poulter was the stud horse of the European contingent last year at Valhalla, too, when he was a highly suspect, controversial captain's pick by his text-messaging pal, Nick Faldo. To think that the PGA of America was giving me grief over my claim that Corey Pavin was a boring and uninspired pick as the U.S. captain? Meanwhile, the Euros are tossing around venom and vitriol. In a team-room fistfight, I'll take the blue-collar Poulter, because I'm guessing he'd fight dirty and aim for the bollocks if necessary. A stiff-upper-lip guy like Monty is definitely a Marquess of Queensberry type. And yes, between haymakers, they can definitely take down the Yanks to regain the Cup. | Wait a minute. Aren't the Europeans just one big happy family? The band of brothers with the locker room chemistry that the good ol' play-for-pay Yanks can't duplicate? I absolutely love the whole soap opera that surrounds the Euros with regard to the Ryder Cup, especially this installment with the combustible Monty at the helm. It simply never ends. This has been going in since before they even named him captain. The drama is mesmerizing. To be truthful, I'm envious that the Americans simply can't get that worked up over any sporting event, much less an exhibition that takes place every two years. I know the American team cares deeply, it's just that they don't obsess about it. The Europeans obsess, and the sense of superiority they built up with a streak of dominance over the Americans was shattered by last year's loss to a supposedly inferior squad of Yankee Doodle Dandies. The Euros will be most formidable in Wales -- even more so if Poulter makes the roster. Monty's lightning-rod persona will make it electric, and he sure doesn't want his RC legacy to be besmirched in any way by a loss on home turf. Monty's ego exaggerates the importance of his captaincy. His petty sniping may actually hinder the Euro camaraderie and his smugness may energize the Americans. And as good as the Euro players are, they had better watch out. The FedEx Cup schedule has served to hone the U.S. stars into peak shape for these events at a time of year when they used to be on relative hiatus. And a hungry Tiger hasn't won one of these in 11 years. |
