If there were major championships for reticence then Vijay Singh would be a regular in the winner's circle, but even by his standards the big Fijian was taciturn after finishing the second round of the Northern Trust Open.
"No comment," he said as he departed the scorer's room at the Riveria Country Club in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon and he was not referring to the missed four-footer on the final green that confirmed he would not make the cut.
If English cricket has been shocked at this week's revelations surrounding the businessman Sir Allen Stanford, then that reaction has found its echo in the world of professional golf, particularly in the United States where Stanford had extensive ties with the sport, both with those who play it and the organisations that run it.
Stanford sponsored an event on the PGA Tour – the Stanford-St Jude Championship, which was due to be played in Memphis, Tennessee, in June. He sponsored the LPGA's season finale, the Stanford Financial Tour Championship. He also sponsored a number of high- profile players, among them Morgan Pressel, one of the most promising young Americans in the women's game, and Camilo Villegas, currently being touted as a potential challenger to Tiger Woods.
Meanwhile, Woods himself has a tangential link with the troubled company – Stanford is one of the founding sponsors of the AT&T National tournament on the PGA Tour, an event hosted by the world No1 in aid of his charitable foundation.
But no one in the game is more visibly associated with Stanford than Singh, who last month signed a sponsorship deal to carry the company's logo on his bag, shirt and hat.Very few top players agree to such deals with companies that are not directly involved in golf, and they are usually exceptionally lucrative. Details of the Fijian's arrangement with Stanford were not released but there has been speculation it might have been worth as much as $3m a year to the player.
"No comment," Singh repeated when asked if he had received any of his sponsorship money from Stanford, or if he had invested any of his wealth with the company. But as the beleaguered businessman contemplated the collapse of his empire, and possible criminal charges, he might have be heartened to see that the Fijian continued to display the Stanford logo even while the revelations unfolded.
It will be interesting to see if Singh arrives at next week's World Match Play Championship in Arizona with a brand new wardrobe.
It will be interesting, too, if there are any further developments in a story initially published in the New York Post alleging that IMG, which represents many of the world's leading golfers, including Singh and Woods, had a "quid pro quo" arrangement which saw the sports agency hired by Stanford to proffer advice on golf sponsorship and the staging of tournaments, and in return IMG "quietly steered clients who were looking for investment advice" towards the Texan's firm.
The allegations, which the Post claimed were confirmed by three separate sources, were widely disseminated by the US financial media and drew an angry denial from Mark Steinberg, who runs IMG's golf division in the States and is also Woods's agent.
"We do not now, nor have we ever had, a 'quid pro quo' agreement with Stanford or anyone else where IMG would be compensated in exchange for directing our clients to invest with them," Steinberg said in a statement. "IMG's 50-year history of success is built upon staunchly protecting the professional interests of our clients. IMG does not give investment advice to our clients – period."
If Steinberg was categorical in his denial about the most damaging aspects of the Post's story, he conceded that his agency did have a business arrangement with Stanford "to provide consulting services in the area of sponsorships and activation in golf".
He did not expand on the details of this arrangement but the US-based magazine Golfweek reported that IMG has a staff member based in Memphis to help with the staging of June's PGA Tour event.
In the immediate aftermath of this week's revelations it had been thought the tournament's future was under threat but the PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem insisted that it would go ahead as planned. "We want to categorically state that the PGA Tour event in Memphis will be played as scheduled this year," he said in statement that was notable for the absence of any mention of Stanford's name.
The omission was understandable but as the days go by and the scrutiny of the Stanford empire grows ever more intense it will not be so easy for the commissioner to expunge the memory of the PGA Tour's most embarrassing benefactor.