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LPGA has right idea with steroid policy

LPGA has right idea with steroid policy, By: Larry Bohannan November 17, 2006 There is no need to test for drugs in our sport. There is no hard evidence to suggest performance-enhancing drugs are a problem in our sport. Who does that sound like, baseball commissioner Bud Selig in 1996? How about PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem in 2006? Actually, the answer is both. Selig and baseball executives proved to be either naive or tacitly complicit in what became the steroid scandal in baseball the last few years. That scandal has cast shadows over the great home run chase of 1998 and now over Barry Bonds' pursuit of the all-time home run record of Henry Aaron. The main lesson to be learned from baseball's troubles was not to get caught flat-footed when a scandal hits. Proactive organizations anticipate trouble, even when trouble isn't necessarily evident. The lesson seemed to be learned by the LPGA, which announced this week it will start drug testing in 2008. The PGA Tour has taken smaller steps, but stopped short of saying it would start testing its players. OK, so no one really has any evidence that there is a performance-enhancing drug problem on the LPGA Tour. But the women's tour gets the nod over the men's tour for its preemptive action. Ahead of the problem Finchem and PGA Tour officials say they don't believe steroids or other drugs are a problem, and so far there is no real reason to think Finchem is wrong. But the world of sports has changed. Golf may still be a game of honor and integrity, where players call penalties on themselves. But with money comes temptation, something that baseball, football and even bicycle racing have shown. Still, to say there is no need for testing seems short-sighted at best. The tour hasn't done a great job of anticipating problems, as the Casey Martin-cart dilemma proved. The men's tour did issue a statement saying it is continuing discussions on its policy on illegal substances and will soon a specific prohibited substances list and an outreach program for its players. But with all of that in place and pressure from the rest of the sports world, drug testing on the tour can't be far behind.