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

By Mark Lamport-Stokes

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