The PGA Tour will start to randomly test its players in the spring as part of an unparalleled attempt to jointly coordinate screening and policing policies worldwide. 10 substances will be banned including anabolic steroids, street drugs, blood-doping agents and artificial hormones. The European Tour, LPGA, PGA of America, U.S. Golf Association, Royal & Ancient Golf Club and Augusta National Golf Club will all be testing for the same thing as golf will try to make the testing a worldwide policy. "This is very good news for us that all of the bodies are on 'side' including the four majors," the European Tour commissioner George O'Grady said.
The testing procedures and punishments will not be set in place until at least November, but the players will most likely be tested during the season and also during the offseason like other large sports do. Golf decided to do drug testing "so we can demonstrate our sport is clean -- and we can keep it that way," Peter Dawson said, the executive director of the R&A. Peter helped lead the need for standard global testing.
The testing will cost around $1.5 million to run over the next two to three years. It was inevitable for golf to join onto the random steroid testing that most of the large sports do now. Until there is a test for HGH (human growth hormone), steroids will stay out of reach and out of our control. A good example is a new sports story that came out today (Thursday). It was about the American cycling star Floyd Landis. Floyd's 2006 Tour de France title was taken away after he tested positive for synthetic testosterone, a type of anabolic steroid that was found in Floyd's 'B' sample. The ruling, handed down nearly four months after a bizarre and bitterly fought hearing, left the American with one final way to possibly salvage his title - an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The decision was 2-1 to maintain the results of the positive drug test. "Today's ruling is a victory for all clean athletes and everyone who values fair and honest competition," U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said. Landis will now take a huge blow because for months he consistently stated that he never took drugs and that the French anti-doping agency screwed up the tests.
Obviously, Landis had something to say, "This ruling is a blow to athletes and cyclists everywhere," Landis said. "For the Panel to find in favor of USADA when, with respect to so many issues, USADA did not manage to prove even the most basic parts of their case shows that this system is fundamentally flawed. I am innocent, and we proved I am innocent." If Landis does not appeal this case, then he will be the first cyclist in the 105-year history to lose a title because of a doping offense.
This only shows even more that it doesn't matter what professional sport it is, steroid use will not slow down until an iron fist comes down and general testing is done like what the Olympics do with their possible athletes. Everybody knows that the Olympic committee is the harshest when it comes to steroid testing and they are very successful with it. We have MLB and their bullshit way of testing baseball players and how they turned their head when they knew that players like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire were "juicing" up when they were hitting 60 + homeruns. The NBA still has not used random drug tests with their athletes and who blames them, they already have bigger problems than the NFL and MLB combined. They have NBA refs betting on games and players running up into the stands and taking swings at fans. David Stern will never get the Detroit/Pacers game out of his history…the NBA will be tainted because of the game where Ron Artest was suspended for the whole NBA season without pay.
The next sport to test for drugs will be tennis, mark my words because they will be pestered by the media until they do it also. People will start to second guess tennis stars like Roger Federer and Rafael Nedal and ask if they "juice" like Jason Giambi.
