O’Grady Is Suspended for Six Events, Fined $5,000; Now Might Sue the PGA

One day after winning the first tournament of his PGA Tour career, golfer Mac O’Grady was informed Monday that he must begin serving a six-event suspension for “conduct unbecoming a professional golfer.”

The Hartford Courant reported that O’Grady was notified Monday of the suspension and an accompanying $5,000 fine.

“I talked to the (appeals) committee chairman today and he told me they had affirmed the commissioner’s decision,” Steve Novak, O’Grady’s lawyer, told the newspaper Monday by phone from San Diego. “Since we’ve exhausted all of our administrative avenues, we may have to consider legal action as an alternative.”

He added that a decision whether to take legal action would be made “hopefully by Wednesday.”

“Mac wants a little more time to decide what he wants to do,” Novak said. “I will do whatever is in the best interests of Mac O’Grady, but we both agree that it’s to no one’s best interest to keep this thing dragging on.”

Tour media spokesman Ric Clarson, reached at his Ponte Vedra, Fla., home by The Associated Press, said that “details of that (announcement) were made by public by Mac and his attorney.”

Clarson said there were actions by the Tournament Policy Board “that indicated Mac has been suspended, but until the policy board gives their written opinion to the PGA Tour, the tour has no comment to make.”

However, Clarson said the suspension probably would begin next Monday, which would clear O’Grady to play in this week’s event, the Anheuser-Busch tournament at Williamsburg, Va.

O’Grady would be eligible to compete in the British Open July 17-20 and the PGA Championship Aug. 7-10, neither of which are PGA Tour events. As a winner of the Greater Hartford Open on Sunday, O’Grady qualified to play in the Aug. 21-24 World Series of Golf, a tournament restricted to golfers who won tournaments during the previous 52 weeks.

Despite the suspension, however, Clarson said: “I would think he would be allowed to play in that.”

O’Grady, 35, ran afoul of the PGA Tour and Commissioner Deane Beman in 1984, when he was accused of insulting a volunteer worker at a tournament. He also was fined by Beman after several public remarks about the commissioner.

O’Grady appealed his case to Beman and, after losing, took it before a three-member appeals board. The decision by the board Monday ended O’Grady’s appeal outlets with the tour.

“If he wants to do anything else, he has to go a federal court,” Clarson said. “This was the end of the line.”