Woods Calls for Drug Testing

There is no drug-testing policy on the PGA Tour, and when Tiger Woods called for one this week at the Bridgestone Invitational, no one should have been surprised, according to Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg of IMG.

“There’s a lot out there right now, with BALCO, the cycling and the sprinters, so what he’s saying is, ‘Start with golf, start with me. I’m clean and I think the sport’s clean,’ ” Steinberg said Friday.

“ ‘If people are speculating about golf, let’s get it over now.’ ”

Woods, who has a one-shot lead after 36 holes at Akron and is trying to win his fourth consecutive tournament, said in an interview after his first round Thursday that pro golfers should be tested for performance-enhancing drugs as soon as possible.

“I don’t know when we could get that implemented,” Woods said. “Tomorrow would be just fine with me.”

PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem had said Wednesday that the tour closely monitored drug testing in other sports, such as how the testing is done, what substances are being studied and what happens to the collected information. But he said golf remained a game of honor, where players call penalties on themselves, then equated the behavior code of the game with how the PGA Tour should deal with illegal drugs.

“We don’t have a list of performance-enhancing drugs at this point, but we have certainly made it clear that in golf, using an illegal drug, from a performance-enhancing standpoint, is the same as kicking your ball in the rough,” Finchem said. “They both might enhance your ability to compete.

“I would say that’s pretty much all you have to do in our sport at this point.”

Finchem’s opinion is not universally accepted.

“Although the ‘Chariots of Fire’ model is interesting, that’s not the world we live in,” John Hoberman, an expert on drugs in sports at the University of Texas, said Friday.

Added Charles Yesalis, professor emeritus at Penn State and an expert in performance-enhancing drugs and sports, “Anyone who doesn’t say it’s a can of worms or that it’s a time bomb that is going to explode in your face is nuts. “Given what [baseball Commissioner] Bud Selig went through with his stupidity, with the way he handled it, golf, before it gets hauled into court, should start with something. That’s what the smart money would do.

“I’ve heard every excuse, every rationale you could ever think of, and to listen to the spin of the holier-than-thous -- the spin people always point their finger in every direction other than the right one -- is misguided.

“With a ton of money involved in golf, there’s talk of beta blockers, low doses of human growth hormone, and if you already have the 10th of a 10th of a 10th of a percentage of the public that is good enough to play the PGA Tour, then you take that guy and add 10 pounds of muscle, are you telling me the ball won’t go farther?”

The driving distance of the top players on the PGA Tour has been steadily increasing for decades. Advances in equipment, such as shallow-faced drivers with thin faces of space-age metals, plus improved physical conditioning by the players, inspired largely by Woods, are most often credited with the longer drives.

Bubba Watson leads a list of 18 players who average at least 300 yards off the tee. His average of 319.3 yards is better than the PGA Tour record, 318.9 yards, set last year by Scott Hend.

In 1996, John Daly led at 288.8.

During that same period of time, however, scoring averages have changed little. In 1996, Tom Lehman led the PGA Tour with an average of 69.32. Woods has the best scoring average so far this year, 68.89. Since 2001, the top scoring average on the PGA Tour has been between 68.81 and 68.86.

Because there is no PGA Tour list of illegal performance-enhancing substances, drugs such as beta blockers, which have a tranquilizing effect on users, could find their way into golf, according to Hoberman.

“The real threat to golf, with all hell breaking out in baseball because of steroids, are the drugs that would probably be more useful, say the beta blockers, for calmness, self-control, lack of anxiety, steady hands, attention and focus, all qualities that would seem useful in putting,” he said Friday.

If steroids are being used on the PGA Tour, Finchem said he had no evidence of it.

“If you have some [evidence], let me know,” he said. “If I had an indication that a player was using an illegal drug, we would most likely deal with the players. I don’t know whether we would go out and start testing everybody because we had a problem with a player.”

Woods’ most recent remarks do not differ significantly from what he said in December at his own tournament when asked about performance-enhancing drugs. At the Target World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club, Woods did not rule out the possibility that PGA Tour pros were using performance-enhancing drugs, including steroids, and recommended that the tour look into testing.

“There’s always a possibility,” he said at the time. “Unless you’re tested, there’s always going to be a shadow of doubt on any sport. I don’t see anyone out there who I would think would show signs of it, but who’s to say they aren’t? We don’t know. We don’t see guys out there, 6-5 and 240, 250 [pounds], in shape, cut, all ripped. We don’t have guys out there like that.

“I think we should study it a little bit more before we get into [testing]. Obviously, it’s a path that where do you draw the line? Do you do it on the PGA Tour, Nationwide, but don’t do it on any other tours leading up to that, or all professional golf?

“Obviously, there’s a lot more to it, than just, ‘OK, there’s mandatory testing.’ Where does it start? Who does it? Who is in control of it? What are the substances that you’re looking for?”

But this week, Woods did a turnaround from calling for a study, suggesting that testing begin right away.

The Royal & Ancient, governing authority for golf in the world outside the U.S., will do drug testing in October at the World Amateur Team Championships in South Africa.

Dr. Ralph Gambardella, president of the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic, said the PGA Tour was lagging behind in its approach to testing.

“Is there a role for drug testing in any sport?” Gambardella said Friday. “The answer is yes. We have our head in the sand about a lot of things.

“But when anybody, particularly a well-known, representative figure, comes out and says there should be a role for testing like Tiger did, my hat’s off to him.”

The PGA Tour is an association, not a players’ union, and the players hire Finchem, which means he should reflect their sentiment. Because of his stature as the top player in golf, Woods is preeminent on the PGA Tour and his call for drug testing ought to be taken seriously, according to Dr. Gary Wadler of Manhasset, N.Y, an expert in the use of drugs in sports who serves on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List and Methods committee.

Despite its self-policing code of ethical conduct, golf needs to get in line, he said Friday.

“No sport is immune from the temptations associated with performance-enhancing drugs,” he said. “The one way to put this issue to rest is to do testing. It would behoove golf to sign on to the world anti-doping code and do the required testing.”