Golf.com Response To PGA Tour: "Difference may be seen as semantic."

The PGA Tour called golf.com's reporting on Dustin Johnson serving a six-month suspension inaccurate.

Golf.com has updated their original story to include this:

The difference may be seen as semantic. Faced with a suspension for a failed drug test, a Tour player has the right, under published Tour guidelines, to appeal his penalty. The Tour was preparing for Johnson to lodge such an appeal. But Johnson waived that right and decided to take his self-described "leave of absence."

The Tour’s one-sentence statement did not address Johnson’s drug test results or say whether Johnson's 11-week absence in 2012 was also a "voluntary leave of absence." In that period, when Johnson said he was not playing Tour events (including the Masters) because of bad back, he was seen hitting balls regularly in South Florida, where he lives. The Tour's policy of releasing no information on failed drug tests or resulting penalties essentially allows a player and his advisors to characterize an absence as they wish.