Time for Golf to Stop Being So Naive

Professional golfers take drugs. I know this because drug use is pervasive in society as a whole and professional golfers are part of that wider society. I know it because I have heard numerous tales about golfers using drugs. But mostly I know it because I once saw a professional golfer smoke a joint on the course during a European tour event - the Dutch Open, wouldn't you just know.

So when the endless litany of self-deluded authority figures in the game step up to the microphone to declare there are no drugs in golf, it is fair to assume they are talking codswallop. Eventually, the absurdity of what these authority figures were saying dawned on those who were saying it and they conceded that golf would have to come into line with other sports and introduce drug testing.

From July 1, both the European tour and the PGA tour will start random testing at all their events - a regime that will eventually cover all four major championships.

To say the sport's enthusiasm for this bright new dawn is less than overwhelming would be to take understatement to its outermost limits. George O'Grady, the head of the European tour, has suggest the sport need test only Tiger Woods. "If he's clean, what does it matter what the rest of them are on?" he said earlier this year. Full remarks for good humor, although perhaps not from the International Olympic Committee, which takes the issue of drug testing seriously and which will soon consider golf's application to become an Olympic sport.

O'Grady's American counterpart, Tim Finchem of the PGA tour, has been equally circumspect, portraying the introduction of testing as not so much a forward step as a loss of innocence, while the R&A's decision today to postpone testing at the Open for another year suggests a distinct lack of urgency.

Yet if golf's administrative classes are skeptical about drug testing, many of those who play the game for a living are livid. This is especially true in the States, where some players are in open revolt.

After a players' meeting in San Diego earlier this year, the US Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger was indignant over having a sample collector accompany him into the toilet. And when it was mentioned that testers would be empowered to visit a player's house, Frank Lickliter suggested in so many words that the drug official bring a warrant. "He's going to have a hard time getting off my property without a bullet in his (behind)," Lickliter said, adding that there was widespread resentment that players were being turned into "criminals".

In one way, it is easy to sympathize with those within the game who are resentful about testing. The inclusion of recreational drugs such as cannabis and cocaine on the proscribed list is hardly necessary, at least from the point of view of performance enhancement. Neither drug will help a player play better (the Dutch Open dope smoker missed the cut). Yet if other sports ban these drugs then golf should, too. To argue otherwise would be to argue that golf operates on a higher moral plane than these other sports. Alas, that is exactly what the sport of golf has done for years, especially when it comes to the subject of cheating.

For years golf has prided itself on the uniqueness of its integrity. Only in golf, we are constantly reminded, do competitors call penalties on themselves. It is true the history of sport is littered with countless instances of players calling a penalty on themselves when they could have kept their mouth shut and got away with it. But, equally, there is no doubt cheating exists within the game. Some of it has been exposed through the years but, if locker-room chatter is to be believed, some of it has not.

Golf's reluctance to publicly acknowledge this uncomfortable truth finds an echo in its reluctance to accept the necessity of drug testing. No doubt the overwhelming majority of players would never contemplate using performance-enhancing drugs but, given the rewards are so vast these days, it is naive to believe that some would not be tempted - or may already have been tempted - to seek an edge by using such drugs.

The sport has a choice. It can chose to embrace this naivety, or it can choose to embrace drug testing. Only one of these options will protect the sport's hard-earned reputation for integrity.