Maybe the image-conscious tour sees drug testing as a sign of weakness: Why stoop to collect urine samples and establish penalties like other sports, which have such obvious problems? One can see how the lack of a policy might actually encourage struggling players to consider their medicinal options, the rationalization being that if it isn't illegal, no rule has been broken. It's also worth wondering whether the tour even cares if a guy who can't handle it takes a tablet. The game is hard enough, right? If mother's little helper turns a 71 into a 68, you shake the guy's hand and ask him for his psychiatrist's phone number.
The flip side, of course, makes a lot more sense. You establish a policy because it is the right thing to do, because you're the PGA Tour, where life is good and performance aids haven't been an issue, but you want to keep a good thing going. Because the old ounce-of-prevention edict can be worth a ton of cure, even when you're righteously healthy. Because it is a hard game and you don't want to make it any easier for those who seek an illicit shortcut.
Because that high code of honor runs deeper than the premise that a golfer will call a penalty on himself even when no one else saw an infraction. And yes, you establish a policy because Tiger Woods said so. "I don't know when we could get that implemented," Woods said last summer. "Tomorrow would be fine with me."
Almost a year later, it's about time we slap two strokes on the tour for slow play.
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