Doug Barron.  238 career PGA Tour starts with a best finish being a tie for third in the Byron Nelson Championship in 2005.  Playing on a medical exemption, he made exactly zero dollars on the Nationwide and PGA Tours this season.  Averaging 277 yards off of the tee, the 40 year old is considered a short hitter by modern standards.

This is the face of doping in golf.

On Monday afternoon, the PGA Tour released a statement announcing Barron's positive test and his punishment: a twelve month ban from the PGA and Nationwide Tours.

The revelation happened just hours before golf legends like Jose Maria Olazabal and Lanny Wadkins were inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.  Doug Barron - an utter unknown before 4 o'clock this afternoon - partially derailed an otherwise beautiful ceremony in St. Augustine, Florida.

For so many reasons, people within the golf world are seeking to attach meaning and context to Barron's suspension. 

Primarily, Barron is relevant because he is the first - and only - player to be announced by an American-based tour to have failed a drug test.  Cynics of the policy have openly wondered just how forthcoming the PGA Tour would be with any positive test results.  They dared the PGA Tour to release a positive result because it would invalidate Commissioner Tim Finchem's ardent belief that the policy he eventually implemented would yield no positive test results. 

Well, now there is a positive result, but so what?  Effectively, Barron is a nobody.  In some ways, that is what we have come to expect from other sports.  More often than not, players who are suspended for using PEDs are not superstars.  They are role players, guys struggling to keep their dream alive, and making less than minimum wage.  Barron fits that profile - the one of the minor league ballplayers that we hear about so often - way more than the Mannys, Ortizs, and A-Rods.  By the way, when was the last time someone complained about any of those three?

At the same time, though, the doubters of the purity of pro golfers' urine streams really wanted someone with a much higher profile.  They wanted Ernie Els.  They wanted Camilo Villegas.  Instead, the sacrificial lamb is a 40 year old guy that every writer had to Google to do their column.  La-di-da.

This is one guy, caught one time, using the World Anti-Doping Agency drug list as the basis for determing PEDs in golf.  Considering the breadth and number of drugs on the WADA list, Barron may have simply taken too much Robitussin on some idle Monday. 

Vick's Vapo Rub is on the banned list.  That is on my personal list of banned substances for the smell - not its ability to transform my 12 handicap into a six overnight.

The end result of this incident is a guarantee that this person nobody knows or cares about will remain anonymous to 99.9% of the world for another year.  Provided Barron's injury-hampered career, this probably marks the end of his playing days in the pro ranks.

But what else is there to say?

Tim Finchem was wrong about drugs in golf.  It actually did happen.  Once.  This isn't a gotcha moment - as Sarah Palin would say.  This is an anamoly as far as we know.  Until (a) it happens again and (b) the sinning player is at least relevant enough to be on Big Break, this is a non-issue.

The Tour will tell us about guys that test positive.  Well, they told us about this specific guy.  And now we know the penalty.  So, if Tim Clark disappears for a year on US soil, we'll know why - announcement or not.  Then again, that may spare us the inferences about his height and corresponding bridesmaid moniker on the PGA Tour.

And frankly, to my generation, no one would care unless it was Tiger Woods who tested positive.  Even, then, he would probably have street cred and his Nike collection would fly off of shelves faster than it does now.  Cheating is not only tacitly accepted in our sporting culture by the younger generation; it is downright expected.  For all of the moaning about doping in sport, there does not seem to be any less interest in the entertainment that roided-up athletes provide us.

Golf is different.  It is a sport of gentleman and a game of honor.  Then again, there was more buzz generated about Anthony Kim's hungover pasting of Robert Allenby - and the repeat stone cold sober performance - than there probably will be about this curious case.  The rain at Annandale that canceled the Viking Classic was much more of a downpour on the sport than this announcement.

The story that will raise eyebrows has to be much bigger in terms of quantity and quality of the players involved.  And we don't have a Greg Anderson in our sport unless all of that psychological advice Dr. Gio Valiante is sharing really is code for Human Growth Hormone.

Golf does not have a smoking gun.  They have a shirtless one-off in Doug Barron.