PEDs – will they help your golf
game?
The journeyman pro had been plying his trade on US and Asian
golf courses for 12 years. This year he was back on the PGA Tour after a
three-year break spent on the Web.Com Tour. On this particular Thursday he had
just completed the round of his life – an 8-under par 64. Being the last group
on the course, he knew he had the overnight lead. He walked off the 18th with a
feeling he had been chasing all his adult life. He signed his card. Then he was
asked to follow some guy with a clipboard and pee in a bottle.
Unfortunately the pro in question had relieved himself
immediately after hitting his tee-shot on the last. Try as he might, the golfer
simply couldn’t produce the required sample. Under the rules, this meant the
tester is required to follow the golfer around, wherever he goes, for the next
90 minutes. That being the time-frame within which the tester must obtain the
sample.
The journeyman’s cause for celebration, the round of his
life, deserved some form of recognition. A rare and special moment was being
denied the golfer because of a drug-testing programme that was not only
inflexible, but, some argue, a waste of time and money.
The PGA Tour began its anti-doping drug-testing policy on 1
July 2008. Two weeks later, following the epic 18-hole US Open playoff between
Rocco Mediate and Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines, Mediate labelled the new
drug-testing policy, “the biggest joke in the history of the world.”
In a recent issue of Golf Magazine, six-time PGA Tour
winner, Brandt Snedeker, agreed. “I would do away with drug-testing in a
heartbeat. It’s a complete waste of time and money. Steroids are not going to
help you hit a golf ball.”
Maybe not, but perhaps they can help calm your nerves and
reduce your pulse-rate when coming down the stretch with a share of the lead.
Beta blockers can weaken the effects of stress hormones the body produces in
anxiety-inducing situations.
The Tour’s drug policy came under scrutiny when Hall-of-Famer
Vijay Singh admitted to using deer-antler spray, which contains IGF-1, an
insulin-like growth factor that at the time was on the Tour’s list of banned
substances. After investigating Singh’s actions, the Tour dropped the case when
the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) removed deer-antler spray from its banned
list.
This publicity led to others, such as Greg Norman, calling
for more stringent anti-doping measures, including blood-testing (certain
substances, such as IGF-1 and other human growth hormone cannot be detected in
urine samples). “You only have to look at what happened to Vijay Singh to know
the drugs issue is there,” Norman said.
Not according to Snedeker. “We’ve had drug testing for six
years on the PGA Tour and we’ve had two cases of people getting caught doing
it,” Snedeker said in the interview. “One of them was Doug Barron, who had low
testosterone, who didn’t go through the proper channels and ended up testing
positive (for anabolic steroid testosterone and propranolol, a beta-blocker that
calms nerves). The other was Vijay Singh, who took deer-antler spray, which may
or may not be a performance-enhancing drug.”
Snedeker said he also finds little merit in the argument that
Tour pros might be tempted to take substances to help settle their nerves or
accelerate recovery time between injuries.
“I don’t think it’s ever been a problem in golf,” he said of
PED use. “I don’t think it ever will be a problem in golf. The PGA Tour is
different from football and every other sport in that we call penalties on
ourselves. The worst thing you can be called in golf is a cheater. Trust me, if
there’s a guy that gets caught doing anything a couple of times, whether it be
bending a rule, we know about it, and we let him know about it. You don’t want
to be labelled ‘that guy.’
Earlier this year, Chris DiMarco said drug testing is “the
dumbest thing we do on Tour.”
Among the pros who have voiced support of the program are
Padraig Harrington, Jerry Kelly, and Joe Ogilvie.
“I’d like to say we’re a little different in golf, but
testing is something that’s a necessary evil,” Ogilvie was quoted as saying
earlier this season. “If everybody was Jack Nicklaus, we wouldn’t have to drug
test everyone, but everyone isn’t.”
The sport has often been depicted as being “lenient” in its
anti-doping policy, particularly in Europe, as Justin Rose confirmed. “I have
never been tested on the European Tour,” Rose said. “I have been on the PGA
Tour, many times. I would say four times a year would be average.”
David Garland, the European Tour’s director of operations,
says that when the Tour does test, it targets 10 to 15 per cent of the field and
also liaises with the PGA Tour concerning who they have tested.
As neither Tour uses blood tests, there is an argument that
says they are not really serious about drugs. Other cynics simply point to
golf’s re-admittance to the Olympics as the sole reason a drugs policy exists.
They’ve never had an effect on my scores.
Golfnutter
