Tom English: 'Drugs issue denial is typical of see-no-evil world of golf'

Published on Tuesday 3 November 2009 21:50

GOLF remains in denial about the threat of performance enhancing drugs in the sport even though somebody has now been caught and suspended for a year. The journeyman American, Doug Barron, is the player in question. You may not have heard of him – he's one of the tour's plodders – but that's not the point. The relevant thing here is that Barron has been cast out of golf for 12 months.

We don't yet know what substance he took, but you can be sure that the PGA in America did not take this decision lightly. Given how reluctant they were to introduce dope testing in the first place it is a certainty that they didn't resort to sanction without satisfying themselves to the nth degree that Barron warranted such punishment. They knew what kind of publicity this was going to create and may have opted to bury the news had they thought it was just a minor infringement. Clearly, they think otherwise.

The reaction to Barron's ban among his fellow professionals has been interesting and depressingly predictable. "I'm surprised to hear that," said Stewart Cink. "I know him a little bit. He's taken medicine in the past for a lot of different reasons. I would think that has a lot to do with it."

"I don't believe it," Rod Pampling said. "Doug Barron? Look at the man. Tell him to take his shirt off and ask anyone, 'Do you believe he's on performanceenhancing drugs?'"

"In a way, it matters. And in a way, it doesn't," said Pat Perez. "He's not really on the PGA Tour."

These players and most others remain utterly convinced that golf does not have a problem with performance- enhancing drugs. And you know what? They're almost certainly right. It doesn't. But where they are wrong – so, so wrong – is to dismiss the threat of doping out of hand. They don't believe that cheating of this nature could ever happen in golf because of those old tiresome – and completely bogus – arguments that golfers are as pure as the driven snow and that nobody in the game ever does anything they shouldn't do.

That's the argument of the establishment. These people believe they have the interests of the game at heart when they rubbish all suggestion that one day golf could be touched by the poison of doping. Well, that's the way the tennis world worked as well but that sport is now spinning from the revelations that their beloved pin-up boy, Andre Agassi, took drugs and lied to cover up a failed test.

If it can happen to one of tennis' great superstars, what makes golf so sure that it can't happen to somebody higher up the food chain than Doug Barron?

We hear two arguments on this front. Firstly, that old line about golfers being too honest to do such a thing. Secondly, that golfers wouldn't get any benefit from steroids or Human Growth Hormone or any other doping product out there.

All of this was trotted out in July of 2007 when Gary Player revealed that he knew of professionals who doped. "I don't think there's even a remote chance that (doping] will happen," said Phil Mickelson in response. "Bottom line, nothing helps golf," opined Nick Faldo. There was a raft of other golfers who backed up these assessments. Most of these guys didn't want testing because they thought it demeaning to the great game. Nobody could see performance enhancers entering their sport. Ever.

With the greatest respect to Mickelson, Faldo and the rest of them, they didn't have the medical experience to make such sweeping judgments. Only those who have immersed themselves in the world of the cheats know whether golf is truly safe or not. After Player's revelations I spoke to some of them to find out.

Peter Sonksen, Emeritus Professor of Endocrinology at St Thomas's Hospital and King's College London, has written extensively about doping in sport, particularly in the area of Human Growth Hormone. Conor O'Brien is former chairman of the Irish Sports Council, where he set up one of the world's most respected anti-doping programmes, and is a former committee member of WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency. Professor Sandro Donati is a former coach of Italy's middle-distance runners and author of a famous dossier on the use of EPO in cycling. And Christope Muniesa is executive director of the French Golf Federation where testing for performance-enhancing drugs has been in operation for eight years.

All four of them thought that golf was naive to think it was immune from doping. As Dr O'Brien pointed out: "Golfers nowadays need better muscle function and steroids will certainly give them that. Taking something to increase muscle mass might be the difference between being able to hit a par-5 in two and not, between shooting 69 instead of 71. It would be incredibly naive to think that golf has escaped this problem especially since the purses are so big. Where there is big money, people will cheat. Athletes by their nature are risk-takers. They take chances in their pursuit of glory."

And Professor Donati: "There are many players now on tour with huge upper-bodies and large muscles, whose body shapes have changed recently, and I have my suspicions about them. Not many, just a few."

Muniesa, steeped in the game, had this to say: "Golfers are required to hit the ball further and further now on longer and longer courses and you have to wonder if some of them will turn to doping to help them improve their strength. We have to ask these questions. We have to fight it from the roots because there are people that golfers will come into contact with who will offer them certain remedies to improve their muscle power. If we're saying that none of them will ever take something then we're burying our heads in the sand."

We now have a positive test. Already you can hear the establishment circling the wagons and saying, 'Well, it was only Doug Barron and what the hell does he matter?' and that would be typical of the see no evil, hear no evil world of professional golf. But for the game's sake you hope that those players, managers and pom-pom wielding journalists who said that golf need not worry about doping will now wake themselves up.

Goram's dinner leaves a nasty taste

INTERESTING to see that as soon as The Sun finished its serialisation of Andy Goram's book, they performed a classic tabloid manoeuvre and stitched him up good and proper.

The tabloid tracked down Goram's estranged son, Lewis, who is now 18 years old. The young man says he has tried on 80 different occasions to speak to Goram but has failed every time. Father and son haven't spoken in eight years. Lewis lacerated his old man across a spread headlined: 'Great goalie, terrible dad'.

Still, organisers are pressing on with their celebration of Goram's life and times with a grand benefit dinner planned for later in the month. Just as long as nobody mentions the serial adultery, the 'heartbroken' son, Billy 'King Rat' Wright and the black armband and Sam 'Shankill Butcher' McAllister and their little chat at the infamous Rex bar in Belfast, the homage to a 'hero' should go off swimmingly.