Listen to Tiger
Steroids can help golfers. That's why testing's needed
August 31, 2006
For this week's SI, I wrote the opening essay in the Scorecard section, riffing on last week's confluence of the dead-ball tournament thrown by the Ohio Golf Association and Tiger Woods' stumping for testing on performance-enhancing drugs. I want to make a few more points that space didn't allow.
What made Woods' new public stance on steroids so noteworthy -- it was played on the front page of the Los Angeles Times -- is that the second-most powerful man in golf, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, has very noisily said he sees no reason to test his squeaky-clean players. Finchem has made millionaires out of even the Tour's middling middle-class, and these loyal troops have largely adopted the commish's line of reasoning.
"We're self-policing out here," Fred Funk said at last month's British Open. "You're either good enough or you're not good enough. I don't think drugs will help you get better."
Here Funk manages to neatly tie together two central myths: that golfers never cheat -- never mind Vijay Singh's one-year suspension from the Asian tour in the 1980s for altering his scorecard -- and that the golf swing, built on flexibility and suppleness, won't benefit from 'roids. On the latter point, the example of baseball is illuminative.
It made sense that beefy power hitters were juicing, but more surprising was the evidence that implicated just as many pitchers, who wanted to add a few feet to their fastballs and speed their recovery time between starts. Steroid use in golf is counterintuitive, but so was the idea that a junk-ball middle reliever might be using.
It is worth noting that what used to be quaintly referred to as the Big Five -- Woods, Phil Mickelson, Singh, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen -- average 6-foot-2 and 194 pounds, and the latter number would be higher if Mickelson didn't self-report a laughably low weight of 190.
Size matters in golf, just as it does in any sport. Golf is increasingly about generating more clubhead speed, and obviously "the cream" and "the clear" could be helpful in this pursuit. It is naive to think steroids wouldn't be tempting to a talented but scrawny young golfer, or a mini-tour journeyman seeking a little edge to help feed his family.
As for the widespread belief that pro golfers would never, ever break the rules, well, that would make them the only people on Earth exempt from human nature.
Athletes in virtually every sport have been ensnared in 'roids scandals, including tennis pros and cricketeers. Pro golfers have been known to cheat on their wives and cheat on their taxes, but they wouldn't think to try something that could significantly boost their performance? C'mon. Anyway, experimenting with steroids is not even against the rules right now, because there are no rules.
Like Woods, Greg Norman is a big-picture guy, and he has been the sharpest critic of Finchem's see-no-evil stance. "That's a bunch of bulls---, as far as I'm concerned," Norman recently told the Sydney Morning Herald. "Don't stick your head in the sand. Step up to the plate. If there's nothing there, great, but if you find a couple who've done it, at least your organization has been ballsy enough to eliminate it.
"You hear about it all the time on Tour, and if there are no rules and regulations in place, you don't blame the players for doing it. It isn't just steroids. Human growth hormone, beta blockers, there's probably a multitude of drugs out there [on the street] we don't even know about. It's been rumored for over 20 years, players using outside substances to help their performances. If you're playing for $5 million a week, [some players are going] to take advantage of it the best [they] can."
It is hard not to draw parallels between the golf firmament's slow response to advancing technologies in equipment and the state of denial on performance-enhancing drugs. Huge titanium drivers and hot balls and 'roids are about the same thing -- power.
The USGA and R&A were asleep at the switch as new technologies reshaped the sport. We are now in an era when golf courses are rendered obsolete in 20 years time. Jack Nicklaus recently announced that he is doing a top-to-bottom remodel of Valhalla, site of the 2008 Ryder Cup, because it has become defenseless against the modern game. This course is not some pre-war museum piece -- it opened in 1986!
Obviously the toothpaste is out of the tube on how far the ball now travels, but it is not too late for golf to be out in front on the issue of performance-enhancing drugs.
It is probably not a coincidence that Woods spoke out publicly about drug testing on the same day that the company that pays him many millions of dollars, Nike, suspended its contract with disgraced sprinter Justin Gatlin. You can never count on pro sports organizations to do the right thing, but they are sensitive to the marketplace. Drug scandals are bad for business, as Woods and Norman know. Golf can still maintain its admirable reputation for fair play, but only if the sport's leadership acts soon.
