Golf-No need to reveal player fines and suspensions, says Tour

KAPALUA, Hawaii Jan 8 (Reuters) - The PGA Tour will maintain its long-held policy of not disclosing players' fines or suspensions despite John Daly's revelation last week that he had been banned for six months.

Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem believes fans have little interest in hearing such information and that golf's reputation for gentlemanly conduct could be tarnished by public disclosure.

"We don't feel like people really care that much," Finchem told reporters before the first round of this week's Mercedes-Benz Championship, the opening event on the 2009 Tour.

"We don't get emails from fans saying: 'Why don't you tell us?' So we don't think there's this hunger for that information.

"And candidly, we don't have that much of it (unruly behaviour) and we don't want to remind people about it. In our sport, a bad thing is a bad word; it's not getting indicted usually.

"If we had a problem of any magnitude, if we had a conduct problem, if we were faced with any significant issues where a player is not showing integrity or respect for the game, we might have a very different attitude.

"So for those reasons, we felt that it's prudent just to follow the policy that we had."

IMPROPER CONDUCT

Twice major winner and fan favourite Daly forced the topic into the spotlight last week by saying he had been banned from the Tour for six months for improper conduct.

The 42-year-old American, dubbed the 'Wild Thing' early in his career and still one of the biggest drawcards in the game, attributed his suspension to four incidents last season.

Among those, he hit a ball off a beer can while playing alongside American musician Kid Rock in the Buick Open pro-am and spent a night in a North Carolina jail after being found in an intoxicated state outside a Hooters restaurant.

"This is the lowest I've ever been," said Daly, who has spent much of his adult life struggling with alcohol, anti-depressants, gambling, binge eating and divorces.

Asked why the Tour had not responded to Daly's comments about his suspension, Finchem said: "No one is calling our office saying: 'Where is John Daly?

"We didn't get those calls. But in this situation, he obviously decided that he said so; that his fans were going to wonder where he was, and that's his prerogative to do that.

"If a player says: 'I was fined $50', and he was fined $10,000, we might correct the record. But that's the extent of our commentary. That's up to the player, whether the player wants to keep it confidential or not." (Editing by Peter Rutherford)