Finchem wants drug tests

After PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem reversed his field Wednesday and called for a united effort from golf’s ruling organizations to test for drugs, the chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency said he was pleased Finchem chose to stop sitting on the sideline.

“I think this is a big forward step for Tim Finchem and the PGA Tour,” said Dick Pound, chief of WADA. “Whether he’s trying to recapture the lead or not, he lost an opportunity to lead before and he’s been left out.

“I applaud him for doing it. You know what it’s like when you have to turn yourself completely around.”

Finchem said that drug testing in sports is a reality and that golf organizations around the world should work together to come up with rules that could lead to tests for performance-enhancing drugs.

“It’s unfortunate that these realities are with us, but they are,” Finchem said in a pre-tournament interview for this week’s Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Conn. “And we have to deal with them, and I think it’s important that golf deal with them collectively.”

Finchem had remained steadfast in his opposition to testing on the PGA Tour, citing a lack of evidence of drug usage by PGA Tour players and also scarcity of data that would show drugs could actually enhance performance in professional golf.

However, Dr. Gary Wadler, a New York University medical school professor and advisor to WADA, said Wednesday that there are at least two instances in which drugs could help pro golfers improve their play.

Wadler mentioned anabolic steroids and beta-blockers.

“Steroids enhance strength, which enables you to swing a club with greater acceleration,” he said. “You’re going to have more force and more distance. Beta-blockers calm the nerves and if you get your heart rate sufficiently slow, you could theoretically putt between heartbeats.”

Wadler also said that beta-blockers could treat hand tremors when putting. He said Finchem should be praised for his most recent stance.

“I am pleased with the commissioner’s words,” Wadler said. “I’ve never thought there was anything inherently unique to golf that would preclude it from discussions about performance-enhancing drugs.”

Although the PGA Tour is the richest and most powerful of golf’s governing bodies, it is among the last to join the move toward drug testing.

The LPGA Tour announced last year it would start drug testing in 2008. The European Tour is developing a drug-testing system that could start in 2008 and when the Royal & Ancient and the USGA did a sample test at the World Amateur Team Championship in South Africa last year, all 12 golfers tested negative.

Finchem said the PGA Tour is coming closer to a rule on performance-enhancing drugs and said he expects to have one done this year.

Most U.S. professional leagues have drug-testing guidelines and penalties in place. In the NFL, players are administered urine tests randomly all year for anabolic steroids and amphetamines. No blood testing is done, the only way to detect human growth hormone.

In the NBA, four-times-a-season urine tests check for steroids, but not human growth hormones or designer steroids.

Major League Baseball’s drug policy spells out two urine tests a year and between seasons for anabolic steroids and amphetamines.

In the NHL, there are two tests during the season for anabolic steroids, but no tests during the off-season, and designer steroids are not on its testing list.

thomas.bonk@latimes.com