Former top-50 player Robert Garrigus has been suspended by the PGA Tour for three months for violating the Tour’s anti-doping program, “testing positive for a substance identified as a drug of abuse.”
According to Garrigus, the drug he tested positive for was marijuana, which, as he noted in a statement on Twitter, is legal in many states but not permitted by the Tour. Garrigus apologized to his family and friends, acknowledging he failed this test “after a long period of sobriety,” and said he intends to “take this time away from golf to be with my family and work on regaining my sobriety.”
https://twitter.com/garrigus_robert/status/1109160710834216961
Garrigus is currently the 450th-ranked player in the world, winning on Tour back in 2010, and has continued to play on Tour as recently as last month. He has struggled with sobriety in his career, with both alcohol and marijuana, discussing the issue at length with GOLF.com in March 2012, even admitting to smoking mid-round on the Nationwide Tour (now the Web.com Tour) back in 2002.
“It’s not a performance-enhancing drug,” Garrigus said at the time. “They shouldn’t even be testing for it out here. It’s something a lot of people use.”
According to the Associated Press, Garrigus is the first player to be suspended for a “drug of abuse.” The Tour now publicly reports suspensions related to drugs of abuse, which it did not do prior to a June 2017 change to the program.
The latest edition of the Tour’s anti-doping policy is not available online, but the USGA links to an October 2017 version which lists three different banned substances as drugs of abuse. (See below.) The anti-doping program is updated by the Tour when deemed necessary. You can find the October 2017 version of it here.
