Tour is in no hurry to start drug testing, By: Thomas Bonk

Pro golfers figure it will happen at some point, but no action is expected at a meeting this week. PGA Commissioner Finchem says he will clarify position.

November 12, 2006

The hot-button topic of drug testing may not get pushed when the PGA Tour Policy Board meets Monday and Tuesday at the tour's headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., but it's not going to be completely ignored either.

Scott McCarron and Joe Durant, two of the four players on the board, say the tour is heading in the direction of developing some sort of drug-testing policy, but PGA Tour senior vice president Bob Combs said there was nothing immediate in the works.



"There's probably going to be some discussion, but there's no reason to expect any sort of action," Combs said. "It will be into next year before there is movement."

Commissioner Tim Finchem had said he has seen no evidence of drug use among PGA Tour players and therefore has been reluctant to adopt a drug-testing policy. But when he spoke to reporters at the Tour Championship in Atlanta, Finchem said he would "clarify" the tour's position in the next several months.

The issue of drug testing on the PGA Tour took on added urgency 10 weeks ago when Tiger Woods announced support for such a program and volunteered to be first in line to be tested.

Durant, 42, told reporters at Atlanta that drug testing on the pro golf tour is coming.

"It's just another way to protect the integrity of our game. I don't think any of that [drug use] is going on out here, but you just can't assume," he said.

Durant also said that the issue of drug testing was brought up at a Player Advisory Committee meeting two weeks ago and that the idea of establishing some type of standard was discussed.

McCarron, 41, said that any steps toward drug testing would be taken only after lengthy discussion and study. "We have to be careful, who does the testing and for what? We don't want to jump in there and look like the Tour de France."

The PGA Tour is unique among major sports leagues in the U.S. because it has no policy about drugs, standing fast to the notion that golf is a sport of honor and that its players police themselves.

Other professional leagues have long-standing drug-testing guidelines and penalties in place. In the NFL, players take urine tests administered randomly for anabolic steroids and amphetamines. The tests are taken during the season or the off-season and players must be tested at least once a year.

Urine tests are administered to NBA players four times during the season to check for steroids. Neither human growth hormone nor designer steroids are on the list of drugs to be tested.

Major League Baseball's drug policy calls for at least two urine tests a year during and between seasons for steroids and amphetamines. Positive steroid results call for a 50-game suspension after a first offense, a 100-game suspension after a second offense and a lifetime ban after a third offense.

Two tests during the season for steroids are the NHL's drug standard, but there are no tests during the off-season and designer steroids are not on the list.

Meanwhile, the Olympic sports adhere to the World Anti-Doping Agency's banned substances. The list of prohibited drugs is so expansive, it requires a 19-page document that includes such drugs as anabolics, certain hormones, beta-2 agonists, agents with anti-estrogenic activity and diuretics.

Both the NFL and Major League Baseball created league-specific drug policies that differ from both WADA, which is based in Montreal, and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in Colorado Springs. The NFL has a contract with the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory, the second WADA-accredited lab, at the University of Utah's Center for Human Toxicology, a lab that the NFL helped fund. The other lab accredited by WADA — UCLA's Olympic Analytical Laboratory — has a contract with Major League Baseball.

The PGA Tour would be best served if it chose an independent, outside agency to handle its drug-testing program, such as the U.S Anti-Doping Agency, according to Dr. Gary Wadler, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, who also serves on WADA's Prohibited List and Methods Committee.

"It's such a complicated business, they should contract it out to a third party," he said. "If you're going to do it, do it right, or don't do it at all."

Wadler said it stands to reason that golfers could gain a competitive advantage if they used drugs such as steroids, to enable them to hit the ball farther with greater strength, or with beta-blockers, which slow the heart rate, and therefore could aid putting.

"I don't think any sport in the world should be out there without an anti-doping program in place," he said. "All it will do is everything, and enhance the credibility of the sport."

The next meeting of the PGA Tour Policy Board is Feb. 27 at Ponte Vedra Beach.