On Monday, the PGA Tour announced the creation of a new Integrity Program that will go into effect in 2018.
The program will target gambling on Tour, specifically to “protect its competitions from potential outside influences related to gambling.”
While the Tour has long prohibited gambling, the new program is much more comprehensive, covering players, their support teams, tournament staff and volunteers, and the entire Tour staff associated with the six Tours overseen by the PGA Tour.
The Tour has hired Genius Sports to help with the implementation of the new policy. Genius Sports will provide a state-of-the-art bet monitoring system that tracks real-time betting activity and uses algorithms to identify potentially suspicious betting patterns.
According to a release issued by the Tour, the goal of the policy is “to maintain integrity and prevent and mitigate betting-related corruption in Tour competitions.”
“The bedrock of PGA Tour competition are the inherent values of golf and the honesty and integrity of our members,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said. “We recognize, however, that no sport is fully immune from the potential influence of gambling. So, we felt it was important to move forward with an integrity program to further protect our competition from betting-related issues.”