By all accounts, Wayne Gretsky himself has ordered Johnson to shape up or ship out if he has any hope of hanging on to his daughter. In Wayne's world it is, to adapt an old Robert de Niro saying, "my way or the Central Florida Expressway". For all the young man's world-class idiocy, though, it is tempting to wonder whether the chief outrage is not the misdemeanours themselves but the extent to which golf has gone to try to sweep them into the long grass.

Firstly, the alleged womanising: Robert Lusetich, the respected Fox analyst and author of a book about Woods' fall from grace, wrote after the story broke that it was "not a huge secret that Johnson had affairs with two wives of PGA Tour players - one broke up the marriage". Secondly, and more seriously, the drug-taking: Johnson had tested positive three times since 2009, twice for cocaine and once for marijuana, and yet it was not until the real reasons were blown off his withdrawal this summer from all competition that the tour decided to divulge any of it.

We can debate the merits or otherwise of being as high as a kite while standing over a slippery four-foot putt, but this is not really the point. The disgrace is that the tour knew full well what Johnson had done, but resolved to tell the world nothing beyond a clumsy, ambiguous statement that he was taking some time away to sort his life out. This is entirely in keeping with their secret-society mentality elsewhere. In China last week, the PGA Tour made clear their disapproval of Patrick Reed for calling himself a "f------ f----t" on live television after a careless three-putt, but refused to say even if they would fine him.

Golf remains unforgivably opaque on matters of discipline. When the European Tour fined Woods for spitting on a Dubai green and when the PGA Tour sanctioned him last year for criticising a match referee, there was no attempt on either occasion to specify the level of punishment. Penalties are kept in-house and Johnson's drug transgressions are thus treated with nothing like the seriousness they deserve. If you needed yet another reason why golf should not be in the Olympics - and Darren Clarke was adamant this week that he would not be in Rio, arguing the Games should "represent the pinnacle of amateur, not professional sport" - it is that it displays little commitment to honouring the drug protocols required.

Yes, there is far more random testing, but the Johnson case proves that there is also an unseemly scramble to conceal the evidence whenever a drug test comes back positive. If the tour will not even bother to explain his offence, then where is the harm to his reputation? Johnson is simply the sinner they would rather you did not know about.