DJ, The Remix

The reviews are in and no one is coming out looking to clean from the Dustin Johnson story.

When last we visited this sordid mess, the Tout had taken the unusual step of denying that DJ was, in fact, on suspension at the time of his "voluntary leave of absence."  Unusual in the sense that the Tour has a policy of not commenting on disciplinary actions, and a denial meets any known definition of the word "comment".   

Gary Smits, who writes for Commissioner Ratched's hometown paper, was surprisingly able to get PGA Tour Executive Vice President Ty Votaw on the phone and received this clarification:

“We reserve the right to correct misinformation or reports that are inaccurate,” Votaw said. “That is what we did. The policy hasn’t changed.”

Got it Ty, you don't comment on these matters, errr....except when you do.  And you do presumably

understand how this logic thing works, right?  The denial of one rather trivial detail of a story is effectively a confirmation of all of the other details in the story.  

Before we move on, Votaw dug himself in further with this, which I won't pretend to understand:

“We differentiate because we think it’s appropriate,” Votaw said. “Substance-abuse is about personal conduct, We think it’s appropriate to treat substance abuse in that manner.”

OK, but which do you consider the more important and how does your treatment of each differ?  And get this from the same Smits article:

Votaw declined to say whether Johnson had indeed tested positive three times, as the golf.com story reported, or has been suspended in the past — only that he was not currently under suspension.

I'm completely baffled as to how, from the perspective of Fortress Ponte Vedra, that mealy-mouthed drivel is better than a simple no comment.  Here's how Shackelford reacted:

So say a media entity not of golf.com's stature reports a player suspension but the tour does not acknowledge the report perhaps because the entity in question is not widely seen, should we assume the report is accurate? Or say the PGA Tour does know of an inaccurate report, but simply finds the player not to their liking as an individual or as marketable?

The first point is no doubt valid, but not of great interest to me.  But as to the second point, does anyone think the Tour did DJ a favor here?  From where I sit, they confirmed the three drug test failures, use of cocaine and every other salient detail in the story.  And what, pray tell, did they gain?  

 Not surprisingly, Golf.com, which had broken the initial story, then responded to the Tour's denial with this addendum to their original story:

The difference may be seen as semantic. Faced with a suspension for a failed drug test, a Tour

player has the right, under published Tour guidelines, to appeal his penalty. The Tour was preparing for Johnson to lodge such an appeal. But Johnson waived that right and decided to take his self-described "leave of absence." 

The Tour’s one-sentence statement did not address Johnson’s drug test results or say whether Johnson's 11-week absence in 2012 was also a "voluntary leave of absence." In that period, when Johnson said he was not playing Tour events (including the Masters) because of bad back, he was seen hitting balls regularly in South Florida, where he lives. The Tour's policy of releasing no information on failed drug tests or resulting penalties essentially allows a player and his advisors to characterize an absence as they wish.

In general the Tour has been taking it on the chin in the press, in the Matthew Rudy piece we previously linked and on espn.com as well.  But this Mike Lupica rant, in which he thoughtfully adds to the Commish's available orifices has been the most widely linked:

No, the joke here, clearly, is the PGA Tour’s drug policy, and the way the sport’s high

commissioner, Tim Finchem, administers that policy without anything resembling the transparency about drugs you get in other major sports; and the way the people who run the sport are dealing with a story from Michael Bamberger and Mike Walker at Golf.com, that Johnson has effectively been suspended from the Tour for multiple positive tests for marijuana and cocaine, the most recent one being for cocaine.

In other words: I did it. The idea that it somehow matters in the whole grand scheme of things whether he walked away or got shoved is irrelevant, unless your concern is merely damage control. By the way? If Johnson has a drug problem, it is not the crime of the century. But it is the PGA Tour’s clumsy and obvious cover-up here that now becomes the problem for the people who run the sport.

OK, I'm in agreement on the merits, but I still don't see the damage-control merits of the Tour's denial.  The disgrace this go-around is the first two failed drug tests, which begat No. 3.  And I'm certainly in agreement with this bit:

But sometimes guys like Finchem forget that they’re supposed to be caretakers of a public trust. Finchem forgets that in this case, and something else much more basic about the sport he oversees: 

You either ran the red light or you didn’t. There is either strict liability for drug penalties, whether they are for performance-enhancing drugs or a drug like cocaine, or there isn’t. If there isn’t liability for somebody like Johnson after a series of positive tests, then what sort of deterrent is there for the next frat boy?

And here's his rousing climax:

You know why they look like they’re hiding something? Because they are. Not in the interests of protecting Johnson or his reputation, but because they think that the truth about how everybody arrived at this moment is really, really bad for business. You can only imagine the hand-wringing from Finchem back in the day when they found out Tiger Woods had been treated by Dr. Anthony Galea. 

These guys somehow think they can protect the Tour’s brand and image by acting this way. Only now they do the opposite. This is a sport that loves to talk, often incessantly, about its honor and its adherence to the rules, and how players routinely call penalties on themselves for infractions only they see. 

How about Finchem does that to himself now?

This begs the bigger question.  I know they think they're protecting their business interests and, being awfully charitable here, the integrity of the game.  But DJ snorting Bolivian marching powder up his nose is a personal failing, one that doesn't reflect in any way on the game.  And right now, as Lupica and others have made clear, Tour management has assumed responsibility for the mess.

And Jason Sobel makes his own contribution to the cause with a recap of Johnson rumors past and present:

When one caddie here at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational received news of Dustin Johnson’s purported self-imposed leave of absence for the remainder of the PGA Tour season, he crowed, “What, did he hurt himself lifting another Jet Ski?” 

That response was a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to Johnson missing three months of the 2012 season, which he explained away at the time as a back injury after that theoretical dockside incident.

Heh, that's a good one.  Sobel also recounts these fairly well-documented stories:

When he was 16, according to a Golf.com report from 2011, Johnson was coerced by a

friend’s older brother into buying bullets for a gun that had been stolen in a robbery. That man later used it in a murder and while Johnson was pardoned, the incident still left an imprint.

“I sat down with myself afterward, looked in the mirror and realized, ‘This is not who I am, not what I want to be,’” he told the website. “I wanted to go to college. I wanted to play golf. It was an easy decision, getting back on the right path. I didn't want to throw all this good stuff away.”

In 2009, his second full season on the PGA Tour, Johnson was arrested for driving under the influence. A dashboard video from the arresting officer’s patrol car shows Johnson unable to walk a straight line or listen to the officer’s instructions.

And Hank Gola had this comment in a Daily News story:

“It was probably just a matter of time before [news of Johnson’s drug use] came out. It was pretty widely known.”

And there were other signals, such as this:

Swing coach Butch Harmon split with Johnson in 2011 because of what he called his “extra-curricular” activities at the time. Reached Friday, Harmon had no comment on the latest developments.

Similarly, I thought it was highly significant when caddie Joe LaCava dumped DJ so quickly to take Tiger's bag.  LaCava was clearly there to provide adult supervision in the aftermath of the Whistling Straits bunker and a missed tee time, a job almost any caddie would take based on DJ's potential.  But the choice to jump to Tiger wasn't that clear cut at the time in view of his injuries, and I took it to mean (accurately it seems) that Joe didn't like what he saw i his short time looping for DJ.

 And we don't take a back seat to TMZ or any other news organization in pursuing the FULL story, so we'll need to refresh everyone's memory on these rumors, as sumed up by Kevin Casey at golfwrx.com:

The first rumor to surface was that of the Tour wife whose marriage was allegedly broken up by her affair with Johnson. The name that bubbled up was Alli MacKenzie, the ex-wife of Tour pro Will MacKenzie. As with any rumor like this, some instantly believed the affair on exactly zero evidence. The rumor remains wholly speculative, as no proof has surfaced that a Dustin-Alli tryst occurred. Actually, speaking to the unimpeded and accelerating spread of this gossip, Alli MacKenzie already denied the unsubstantiated intel.

If that wasn’t enough, the name of the alleged second Tour wife came into the open: Erin Walker, the spouse of the current leader in the FedEx Cup standings. Again, her name was conjured up out of thin air. At this point, we’re getting into Salem Witch Trial territory, where any name listed by any single person seems to warrant further attention for some reason.

Considering Mrs. Walker is a fierce advocate of her husband, it’s rather unlikely that her name is correct. At the very least, she is no more likely than any other Tour wife, and she appears to be the victim of latent gossip grasping at straws.

So our hero has lived quite the fast life, regardless of the truth of some of these rumors.  Let's hope he understands the magnitude of his problem and truly seeks help, or we'll expect another relapse.