Claims that Tiger Woods is suspended for drug use are baseless and ridiculous

What’s all this about claims that Tiger Woods is suspended for drug use? Here is what you need to know.

It’s unfortunate that in the digital age that even the craziest, most baseless of claims get attention.

The claim by a former tour player that Tiger Woods is not out of golf recovering from an injury, but is in fact serving a month suspension after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs is one of these. Totally baseless and completely ridiculous.

Here is what happened.

Dan Olsen, a former PGA Tour player told a Michigan radio show last Friday that Woods had been suspended by the PGA Tour.

“I heard he’s on a month’s suspension.” Olsen said. “It’s kind of a strong witness. It’s a credible person who is telling me this.”

He went on.

“It’s not testosterone, but it’s something else…, I think when it’s all said and done, he’s gonna surpass Lance Armstrong with infamy.”

It’s a bizarre interview and Olsen doesn’t exactly come across as being very credible. Most people raised eyebrows the minute he suggested the suspension was just a month.

The golf media collectively held their breaths. Not because of the claims, but because Olsen had better be correct otherwise the weight of Tiger Woods Inc would be on him fast and furiously. And rightly so. This is an almighty thing to suggest and needing some almighty evidence to back it up.

Soon enough, Tiger Woods agent Mark Steinberg released a statement:

“These claims are absolutely, unequivocally and completely false. They are unsourced, unverified and completely ridiculous. The PGA Tour has confirmed that there is no truth to these claims.”

The tour almost never comments on these sort of issues at all so it’s somewhat surprising that even the executive vice president Ty Votaw made any sort of comment on the matter.

“There is no truth whatsoever to these claims,” Votaw said. “We categorically deny these allegations.”

Yesterday afternoon, Olsen retracted the claims telling ESPN that he’d backed off from everything he’d said.

“Everything I said on that radio interview was only my opinion and not based on any first hand knowledge or facts. I want to make a full retraction to everything I said for the entire radio interview, and I apologize to Tiger, Nike, Phil, Tim Finchem and the PGA Tour.”

One could argue that this situation would never had happened if the PGA Tour were more transparent with their discipline and suspension policies. The case against Vijay Singh for using the ineffective deer antler spray was a classic example of the policy going wrong. (By all reports, Singh is yet to put the matter behind him).

But being what it is, the claims from Olsen were baseless, stupid and should be dismissed for what they were – utter garbage.

As you were.