As PGA Tour pros go, Doug Barron is one of the lesser lights of professional golf. He's been on the PGA Tour for nine full years since 1995 and bounced over to the Nationwide Tour in other years. In 2009, he didn't win a dime in four Nationwide starts and one PGA Tour event.

But Barron has made tour history anyway. He's the first player to be suspended under the PGA Tour's drug policy that debuted in July of 2008. That's likely not the kind of history Barron hoped to make in a career dating back to 1992.

What makes Barron important is not his on-course performances — he's finished as high as third in a PGA Tour event and second in five Nationwide events. He's important because he proves something that most people in golf never wanted proven. Some golfers, even if it's just one, might be using something out there they shouldn't be using.

One of the arguments against the tour instituting a drug policy was the long-held notion that golfers, serious golfers, would never cheat. It's the spirit of the game, you know.

But in a world where money has spiraled out of control for professional golfers, and where more and better ways of “cheating” seem to be popping up all the time, it seemed almost impossible to believe that not a single player in a single PGA Tour sanctioned event wasn't doing something a little bit shady.

Now we have an answer. Someone was doing something.

For the record, in the statement announcing Barron's suspension, Barron apologized for any negative light he might have brought to the tour and its players and said he wasn't trying to gain a competitive edge. The statement doesn't say what Barron tested positive for.

Meaning of it all

So what do we take away from this?

First, it doesn't mean a lot because Barron, 40, isn't having much of an impact on the tour these days, so not having him around for a year is not a big deal. It's like Major League Baseball suspending a Double-A pitcher. No one in the big leagues will notice.

But it also means that the PGA Tour was right to have instituted the drug policy, even if it rubbed against the very traditions of the game.

No one is comparing the drug problem in golf (what problem?) to baseball, but baseball looked foolish when the steroid controversy broke and the commissioner's office had no tools to combat either the player's abuse or the public's ridicule of the “dirty” sport. Now baseball has a policy, as Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers knows all too well.

Golf is fortunate that no horror story of a star player using performance-enhancing drugs has come out. Or better, no story of a star player using illegal drugs has come out like tennis is now facing with Andre Agassi.

Golf managed to get ahead of the curve. It was pro-active, even if it was moved to be pro-active only because every other sport in the world was going to drug testing.

Now the PGA Tour can say the testing works, because someone was caught. And the tour, and the LPGA as well, can say the drug policies are helping to protect the integrity of the game.

Which is what the drug policy was about to begin with.

Larry Bohannan covers golf for the Desert Sun. His columns appear Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at 778-4633.