J Schil's Blog

I’m writing a much longer piece on this topic which will be on the blog in the next couple days, but I just wanted to update everyone on what’s happening with Doug Barron. Barron, the PGA Tour journeyman who was suspended last week for testing positive for using a performance-enhancing drug, has gone to court to try and get an injunction so he can play in the PGA Tour Qualifying-School next week.

Barron, who started his career in 1995, tested positive for testosterone and propranolol, a beta-blocker that calms nerves, at the PGA’s St. Jude Classics in Memphis in June, where he was playing on a sponsor’s exemption.

Attorney Jeffrey Rosenblum, representing Barron, said his client took the drugs under the supervision of a doctor for “therapeutic use” and made no secret of it.

He said Barron began taking testosterone in 2005 because his natural level was below the level considered normal.

“It is not performance-enhancing when it is used to keep a man within the normal range,” he said.

….

Rosenblum said Barron has taken propranolol since 1987 for a racing heart. In 2008, his doctor tried to “wean him off” the drug but he was still using it in June when he was tested.

“If he had tried to wean off of it faster, he would have been medically unsafe,” Rosenblum said.

The troubling parts start here: Rosenblum went onto allege that the PGA Tour singled out Barron, an unknown journeyman, rather than better-known, more popular players players. He went onto say that as many as ten current players on the PGA Tour have taken illegal drugs but didn’t get suspended. He added that his goal was to get details released during the trial, if it goes that far.

It is important to note, however, that the PGA Tour takes recreational drugs (like marijuana) differently from performance-enhancing drugs and is not required to announce a suspension for a positive test of those.

More coming….

One of the great water cooler topics around golf for the last couple months has been if Tiger Woods would be eligible for (and maybe ultimately win) the PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year. Well that was answered today when it was announced that for the first time in the 18 year history of the award, it won’t be given out:

The view from tour headquarters is that there is no player worthy of nomination for the award. The Players Advisory Council chose not to nominate anyone to put on the ballot, which goes out to all PGA Tour players at the conclusion of the Children’s Miracle Network Classic.

The award is typically given to a player who returns from illness or injury to play well or to a slumping player who turned his game around.

I’m a little surprised, but it’s most likely that Tiger will win Player of the Year anyway, so he’ll be getting hardware no matter what.

It is here — the final PGA Tour event of the 2009 season, the Children’s Miracle Network Classic at Walt Disney World. If you finish this week in the Top 125 on the money list — you have your PGA Tour card for next year. If you’re in the Top 150, you have conditional status. If you are none of the above, or even if you fall from 126-150, you are headed to Qualifying school, or the Nationwide tour.

It’s a tense, tense, time.

TV coverage is Tomorrow through Sunday, Live, on Golf Channel, from 1-4pm ET.

Remember how we all grew up thinking that Tiger Woods had posted all of Jack Nicklaus’ records on his bedroom wall and beating all of them was his goal for all these years? Every single record? Not so fast…

MEDIA: Tiger, we read from a young age that you pinned all of Jack Nicklaus’s records up on your bedroom wall and you’ve slowly ticked them off as you have achieved his records and you’ve broken them. How many more have you got left
to break?

TIGER WOODS: Actually it’s very interesting that people have kind of exaggerated that record list. It was only probably about four or five different things. It was when he started the game of golf, when he first broke 40, when he first won his first junior golf event, his first amateur and when he turned pro, and that was it. That was the list, but obviously people have exaggerated the list a bit.

Want more Tiger? Well, you can have him all week again. He’s in Australia for this week’s 2009 JBWere Masters.

You can watch this event live in primetime on Golf Channel Wednesday and Thursday nights from 10pm-1AM ET, and Friday and Saturday from 8pm-Midnight ET.