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We have plenty in common.
You're sick of reading about it. I'm tired of writing about it.
It has become the gold, silver and bronze medal of sports scourges in the new millennium: Banned substances, performance-enhancing drugs and blood doping.
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| Load up on those liquids, fellas. (Getty Images) |
Late to the sad waltz or not, the image-conscious PGA Tour ushered in a new, and necessary, era as June rolled into July and a new drug policy quietly went into effect. Like other sports, the laundry list of prohibited chemistry is lengthy, the program complex, the ramifications potentially dire for anybody who isn't reading USDA labels.
What the heck is monosodium glutamate, exactly, and will it make my glutes look fat? The FDA has met the PGA and we can all see where this is headed -- right down the toilet with great hilarity. Except for the portion that doesn't go in the toilet, of course, which is what this story is all about.
Everything short of a 12-ounce can of swing oil -- hey cart girl, make mine a light beer, please -- is verboten. Players received a 39-page "anti-doping program manual" last fall, counseling experts have attended tournaments on a weekly basis and the tour long ago established a toll-free player hotline. Anybody curious about whether everything from Chapstick to Preparation H will be permitted -- you know, the ins and outs, comings and goings, from front to back -- has had a chance to ask questions.
The whos, whys and wherefores have been spelled out. The when, not so much.
"The new policy goes into effect July 1," said Ty Votaw, one of the tour's vice presidents. "But if we told you when testing would begin, then it wouldn't be random, would it?"
Before he hurt his knee, the world No. 1 was taking no chances, having already gone number one into a vial to ensure he wouldn't accidentally run afoul of the new law of the gland.
"Twice, actually," Tiger Woods said Monday.
Woods has made a career of hoisting chrome cups, not plastic ones, but at some point when he returns in 2009, we thought you might like to know what he will experience after being tapped on the shoulder and told to tap his bladder.
Crack is a banned substance, but the sample collectors will see plenty of it when tour trousers start dropping, possibly as early as this week at the AT&T National in Washington, D.C. When it comes to testing, we wouldn't want readers to be likewise caught with their pants down, so here's a brief overview of what everybody can expect, from clinical to cynical.
