"Professional golfers sitting in judgment on fellow professional golfers is just plain wrong, never mind illegal."

John Huggan offers a final word on the Eliot Saltman cheating hearing and suggests that the European Tour may be in for a losing legal battle now that Saltman is fighting back. This fact wasn't lost on the player committee that voted on his 3 month ban.

Indeed, more than one member of the European Tour's Tournament Committee - the body charged with deciding the length of Saltman's sentence - this week professed apprehension at having to decide a fellow player's fate.

"It is a very delicate issue and suffice to say in my time on the committee we never had an issue like that and hopefully we won't again," sighed Englishman Paul Casey, neatly summing up the prevailing feeling in the room.

Another prominent committee member, in fact, went as far as not attending last Tuesday's meeting when Saltman's sentence was decided, so deep were his doubts regarding the inherent inappropriateness of the proceedings.