PERFORMANCE ENHANCING

Is Golf’s anti-doping policy a joke?

Professional golfers could use performance enhancing drugs such as HGH – human growth hormone, to gain extra distance off the tee and be confident that the Tours current anti-doping policy will not catch them.

HGH can only be detected by taking blood samples, which the Tour currently resist, citing taking blood could harm a golfers performance..

"I'm all for more testing" Rory McIlroy "I don’t think they should blood-test at tournaments. If you've ever had a needle in here [pointing to his arm], you get a dead arm for a day. But out of competition, testing is no problem at all."

But Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and McIlroy headlined a group of Tour stars who told in 2013, that they had never been tested away from a tournament venue. John Daly called the Tour's testing policy "a big joke" and said he and other Tour pros know exactly when they will be tested, a claim the Tour denies.

The Tour's drug-testing program was designed not so much to catch cheaters as to reassure sponsors that there are no cheaters to catch. The resulting program is too simple, too soft and too secretive to combat the increasingly sophisticated science of doping, according to top officials from WADA and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo