PGA Tour cops a beating on the secrecy surrounding Dustin Johnson
A sports writer lays out the rumours on Dustin Johnson all out on the table.
Oliver Jones of The Telegraph in London wrote an interesting piece this week that will have the PGA Tour in a spin.
Jones’ article titled “Dustin Johnson: Drugs, affairs with PGA Tour colleagues’ wives and the silence that shames golf” has made it to the front pages of a few Australian news websites and it is so blunt that it’ll surely to have PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem squirming in his chair.
Heard the one about the top-10 golfer who failed three drug tests in five years, including two for cocaine, while allegedly carrying on liaisons with the wife of at least one fellow tour player? If not, then those PGA Tour mandarins in Florida would prefer to keep it that way.
You see the PGA Tour have a “no comment” policy when it comes to fines and suspensions. Reportedly Tiger Woods is one of the most fined golfers on tour for his use of expletives and bad on-course behaviour, and reportedly a whole litany of other offences that no one knows about from other golfers.
And then there is this whole saga about Dustin Johnson. The world top-10 player is reportedly taking a leave of absence from the game due to some personal issues but under the tour’s strict “no comment” policy, rumours abound. And Jones is not afraid to list a few of them here.
It has tales of hard drug use, which have prompted Johnson to take – in the tour’s euphemistic language – a “leave of absence” to resolve his “personal problems”. And it has rumoured dalliances with two women married to his colleagues on the road, just to prove that he has learnt precisely nothing from the experience of his close friend Tiger.
Yet another layer to the intrigue emerged earlier this month, when Johnson’s lawyers sued one of his former advisors on 17 counts – including possible racketeering and wire fraud – in a row over a £2 million unpaid loan. If he ever decides to write a book entitled, ‘What I Did in 2014’, it would be an instant New York Times bestseller. Then again, Johnson is not exactly regarded as golf’s foremost man of letters. Many of his detractors have long agreed that his lanky son of South Carolina has a bag of cement for a brain, as reflected in Rick Reilly’s famous remark that “Dustin is so dense, light bends around him”.
It’s frank stuff. But can’t see it changing anything at PGA Tour HQ.