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Published: April 7, 2009
Sports with the Hoff regular, the Ken, analyzes whether the gentlemans game is gone or it just has a cold.
You’ve got to hand it to golfers.
When the PGA hosted a mandatory meeting on the tour’s new anti-doping policy just over 14 months ago, as part of the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, the reactions were mixed, but by far, the loudest responses seem to be full of anger and disbelief. The ever loquacious Frank Lickliter appeared the most incensed. After discovering that the Vicks Vapor Inhaler is among the WADA-prohibited substances, Lickliter commented, ”If I use Vick’s nasal spray three times, they can kick me off the tour forever. Now, do you think Vick’s nasal spray is helping me compete out here? Half the stuff they’re testing for doesn’t help golfers. These so-called experts are not experts in golf.”
Perhaps not, Frank. However, they are experts in drugs and doping and in the enhancement of athletic performance as a result of these substances, and their existence is nothing more than a commitment to ensuring a level playing field. Is that really so bad?
Now, the Vicks Vapor Inhaler might not straighten out a putt, lengthen a drive, or help Craig Stadler perspire less on his foray around 18 hill-strewn holes, but other substances might, and do.
John "Gloop" Daly
I remember the awe I felt the first time I watched this tank of a young man named John Daly hit golf balls so far you couldn’t see them land. He outweighs you by 100 pounds, he hits the ball 100 yards further. Coincidence? And what if Daly was all muscle, fueled by a Mark McGwire regimen instead of one endorsed by Augustus Gloop?
PGA Tour professionals are, well, professionals. Indeed, the PGA has a long history of tradition and honor – the gentlemen’s game, if you will – the paramount evidence being that golf is the only sport in which players call penalties on themselves. As a group of professionals, one could assume that the level of skill among the top players is reasonably similar (man-machine Tiger Woods excluded, of course). Forms differ, swings differ, gaits differ, putting styles differ, and attitudes differ. But any tourney in which Tiger Woods is not entered is fair game for everybody. Isn’t it?
I’m not so sure (unless one of you can have your caddie channel Bagger Vance – I am sure he is not considered a banned substance by WADA).
To me, there is a sense of not seeing the forest for the trees. Vicks Vapor Inhaler is only one substance on the list – why single that particular item out? Why not turn the microscope on the multi-billion dollar business of your own sport? Take golf equipment, for instance – clubs and balls in particular have been modernized and personalized to the point of absurdity. The guys at Ping, Callaway, Nike, and Titleist make more money than I can count (and as I am a math teacher, that’s hard to imagine), all because someone is willing and able to pay for a custom club that keeps the ball straighter, longer, softer, and smoother. Because someone needs a golf ball with an asymmetrical geodesic pattern of space-time warping dimples that will add 20 yards to a drive, make a landing on the green softer than a baby’s bottom, or create a wormhole to bypass Rae’s Creek altogether on Golden Bell. Aren’t customized clubs a form of advantage? Why doesn’t everyone use the same clubs? Why are composite clubs still called “woods” and “irons” anyway? Oh wait… they do call that one club a “fairway metal.”
Alright, so technology interfered, as is natural. All sports evolve, you say. Football helmets and shoulder pads. Baseball bats and gloves. Ice hockey sticks and pads. Cycling handlebars, wheels, and frames. Swimming suits and goggles. Soccer balls and boots. All have gone through technological evolution. But so did the players in those sports. They realized that someone else was doing it faster, farther, and better, and they were missing out on the paycheck. Maybe they did so legally, maybe not. But the players in those sports are subject to WADA controls and anti-doping policies in some way, shape, or form. So why not golf? Whether it’s Vicks Vapor Inhaler or EPO, the things on that list are probably things you shouldn’t put in your system.
Tiger's Knickers
And to probe more deeply, are you telling me that all golfers are reincarnations of Jones, Hagen, Sarazen, and Nelson? Are players going to start wearing knickers again? Or a nice tam, out of respect for the game? Of course not – it’s a different era of golf. So what about that prodigy that just hasn’t gotten over the hump to crack the top ten? Or the aging veteran trying to make a last run at glory? A little creatine here, a little andro there, or a little needle over there… All of a sudden, holes that used to require a lay-up beckon the shot that can reach in two. Balls in the second cut feel like they are in the shorter stuff. Knees that used to be weak after 71½ holes are stronger, and the birdie putt on 18 is truer. Not only that, the body is more prepared to do it all again next week. That’s the invisible danger of the stuff on WADA’s wall of shame, Frank; it all has the potential to take a pure game, perhaps the purest in all of sport – man vs. course in a contest of will and individual ability – and make it impure by unnaturally tweaking that ability.
On the eve of the Masters tournament, as these honorable men wait with deserved anticipation for their names to be called on the first tee, as they contemplate what they hope to be four days of walking through the hallowed grounds at Augusta National, as they imagine the glory or despair awaiting them at Amen Corner, and as they dream of that stroll in triumph toward the 18th green on Sunday – let us hope they understand that although fewer people are waiting and walking with them in person this year, more will be dreaming and cheering from their homes, transfixed upon these honorable men playing their game and hoping that they are doing so with integrity and honor.
Let the doping control authorities – doctors and scientists with just as many years as experts in their fields as PGA players have in theirs – do their jobs. You just do your job on the course… oh, and remember to leave the Vicks at home.
Tagged with: anti-doping, Golf, John Daly, Masters, PGA, steroids, Tiger Woods, WADA
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