The first tournament of the year to have a star-studded field had not begun and the European Tour’s 2008 season had been going for little more than a month when the warning flags were hoisted: drugs testing; possible changes to the tour’s membership rules; lucrative tournaments that are no longer on the schedule.

These are the issues that are exercising Europe’s professional golfers and, if you were searching for currents of doubt, Abu Dhabi on Tuesday night, when the golfers convened for one of their three or four meetings each year, was the place to be.

The European Tour and the PGA Tour in the United States will introduce random drugs testing on their respective tours in July. This comes 18 months after Royal and Ancient Golf Club tested competitors for drugs at the World Amateur Team Championship and after the European Tour, the PGA Tour, the R&A and a few other bodies agreed on a united policy.

After such collusion, you would have thought that there would be uniformity of intention. Not so, apparently, and it came to light in an amusing way at the meeting on Tuesday when a Ryder Cup star asked: “Why are there three banned substances for penile erection on the US list and only one on our list?” before adding, “Not that I need any, of course.”

Concern was expressed, apropos the drugs testing, that protein drinks have been found to be tainted. Padraig Harrington said that he would not drink anything unless it had been approved for him by his nutritionist. The Open champion also forecast that the testing would unearth problems, but he stopped short of saying that drugs taking occurred in golf, as Gary Player had during last year’s Open.

“We haven’t grown up with the culture of ‘don’t touch this, don’t touch that’,” Harrington said. “From the age of 5, when we start to play golf, we are conditioned not to fudge the rules. We are not as worldly wise as somebody who has been brought up with a drugs policy. I am sure there are going to be rows.”

Although drugs testing is the hottest topic of conversation among players, another subject that players have talked about is whether or not to raise the number of tournaments required to retain membership in the tour from 11 to 13.

Players are worried about the number of tournaments that do not have sponsors or have disappeared from the schedule. The Smurfit Group no longer underwrites the European Open and is alleged to have given £7.2 million compensation to the European Tour, which will stage a European Open this year at a venue to be determined. The departure of HSBC means the World Match Play Championship does not have a sponsor and the Deutsche Bank Players Championship of Europe has gone. These three tournaments had a combined purse of £7.2 million.

On top of this, there are rumours about the health of the French Open, which is scheduled to be staged at the end of June. Some of this is owing to the economic situation, but the chief concern has to do with a lack of support by leading European Tour players who have to compete in the US and Europe to retain their playing rights and remain in the top 50 in the world, with a view to gaining automatic entry into the World Golf Championship (WGC) events.

“My worry is more concerned with players supporting our core business,” Paul McGinley said. “And our core business has always been Europe.

Over the years we have spread our wings to Asia, South America, South Africa, but our core business is the European Opens of this world. We need to address the problem of not having strong fields in such big-profile events with large amounts of prize-money. Losing them hits us hard.

“We’ve got [The Race to] Dubai coming on board, a massive tournament. The people rewarded for going to Dubai should be people who reward the tour during the year – not the people who play seven WGC events, including the majors, and then just play a few appearances in Europe or in Asia, where they get paid huge appearance money and get to 11.”

Overshadowed by all this is whether Paul Casey can win the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship, a prestigious event that has attracted eight of the world’s top 25. Casey finished with a magnificent 65 last year to grab the title, but it was his only victory of 2007 and it is high time he won again.

Analyse this

Testing to begin on July 1
Mandatory education programme for players to begin at Dubai Desert Classic (Jan 31-Feb 3)
Testing to be undertaken “any time, any place”, but mainly at tournaments
Testing to be based, initially, on urine samples
As yet, no set policy on selection procedure.
Testing likely to be random, although winners can expect to be tested
Sanctions, such as suspensions and bans, to fall in line with PGA Tour in the United States
No decision yet as to who will perform the tests. It could fall to one organisation, such as UK Sport, or be carried out by national organisations within the countries visited by the European Tour

Words by Peter Dixon