Drug testing also began this week on the European PGA Tour, while the LPGA Tour began its program at the start of the season. The British Open will not test for drugs until next year.

The National Center for Drug Free Sport, which handles drug testing for the NCAA, will conduct testing for the tour.

Anyone tested at the AT&T National will have an escort on the elevator to the third floor, where the testing takes place in a two-room suite behind a locked door. One side of the room has a large cooler with non-carbonated drinks. The other side is where a player registers, washes his hands and goes into the bathroom with an inspector to provide a urine sample.

Allison Keller, a tour attorney in charge of administering the program, said the process should take no more than 10 minutes.

What took longer was getting golfers up to speed.

The tour spent seven months educating players on banned substances, why they are on the list, how they can get in the body and how to seek a therapeutic use exemption for certain substances. Drug experts were available at every PGA Tour event this year, and there were two mandatory meetings.

That doesn’t mean golfers have embraced the concept.

“I hate it. I hate it. I hate everything about it,” Olin Browne said. “It’s contradictory to the ethics of our game.”

Browne speaks for several players who lean on the notion that golf is steeped in honesty, with players calling penalties on themselves. Using a banned substance would be no different from kicking a ball out from under a tree.

“It’s kind of a necessary evil,” Justin Leonard said. “In this age of sports, with all of the scandals that you’d have and the drug testing in other sports, I think it’s necessary. It’s unfortunate, because golf is a game of honor and integrity, but I hope that we don’t find somebody violating that honor.”

Finchem said the tour might disclose how many players were tested at the end of the year. But under its new policy, the tour only would reveal a positive test after all appeals. Then, it would release the player’s name, the violation and the penalty — but not a specific drug that was found in his system.

Sanctions range from one year for the first offense, five years for a second offense and a permanent ban after that.

“We are all in a position to put this rule to effect, enforce it, keep the kind of problems out of the sport that we have seen in other sports,” Finchem said. “And in three, four, five years, we’ll look back and say, ’Did we keep these problems out of our sport?’ I’ve got a high degree of confidence that the answer will be yes.”

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