SIMON LEWIS: Golf can’t be naive to sport’s greatest blight
The Fijian major champion acknowledged in a magazine interview in January he had used deer antler spray, which contains a muscle-building hormone banned by the PGA Tour. His declaration prompted an inquiry by the Tour and Dawson said he understood Singh’s case would be heard within a couple of weeks, which should bring matters to a head next week.
“The R&A were very keen to get anti-doping policies into golf,” Dawson said before accepting the body which does most testing in golf is the PGA Tour, whose testing of urine samples only cannot pick up the banned substance in the deer antler spray Singh admitted to taking. That substance can only be found by blood test.
Still, said Dawson: “I genuinely believe that golf is a clean sport, but we cannot be complacent. I hope I’m not wrong in that.”
So do we Peter, so do we, but until you institute the blood testing that can detect the substances you ban, we will never actually know. Which is the point Greg Norman made yesterday when he branded golf’s anti-doping procedures as “disgraceful”.
“You only have to look at what happened to Vijay Singh just recently to know the drugs issue is there,” Norman told The Australian newspaper.
“How deep it is, I have no idea because we only do urine analysis instead of blood testing. If you really want to be serious about it and find out what’s really going on, we need to do blood testing. I think it’s disgraceful, to tell you the truth. The golf associations have to get together and step up.
“It’s a pinprick for a player and you find out what’s going on. If you’re the head of golf or any sport, if you’re the commissioner for a sport, it’s your responsibility to make sure your sport is clean. ... That should be your number one priority.”
As a businessman every bit as successful as he was a golfer, Norman also noted the financial benefits of keeping golf free of performance-enhancing drugs.
“Any sportsman or sportswoman who uses an outside agency to improve their skills is cheating. It sickens me. They’re putting a black eye on their sport. If a sport gets itself clean, the corporate dollars will always be there because people will know it’s a sport they can trust. The rest will take care of itself.”
Even if it is just the money aspect of this problem that gets golf’s governing bodies motivated, let’s hope the R&A and its fellow travellers are true to their word and start to take this problem seriously.
Gary Player was laughed at a couple of years ago when he suggested doping was rife within the game and he may well have been overstating his case but what if Singh’s case was indeed the tip of the iceberg?
If the people who run golf are, as Dawson suggested, not complacent about the subject they should implement far stricter dope-testing of their athletes. And if they are in any doubt about what can happen to a sport built on Corinthian spirit and gentlemanly conduct when its core values are slowly eroded by the realities of the modern world then they should take a look at cricket and its match-fixing scandals or baseball, that paragon of wholesome American life which is now defined by asterisks and Congressional hearings, and whose athletes are the constant subject of speculation as to whether they ‘juice’ or not.
Wouldn’t golf be so much the poorer if its touring professionals were treated in the same manner?
While those same governing bodies wring their hands over doping, anchored putters and the like, their other remit to grow the game continues apace around the globe. Closer to home though there are efforts to make golf more inclusive rather than just trying to reach bigger and more lucrative markets. For many, including the young and those with disabilities, golf is inaccessible, expensive and time-consuming.
So this column is happy to share news of the efforts of the Mallow-based SNAG Golf Ireland, whose Golf4Schools initiative and SportsAbility programmes are making giant leaps to make the game as accessible, cost-effective and interesting as possible for the young and disabled communities in this country.
SNAG, an acronym for Starting New At Golf, the equipment features oversized clubfaces, larger balls and fun targets to take the frustration out of getting up and running in what should be a fun sport for everyone to play.
And it is proving to be a huge success, according to SNAG Golf Ireland’s Michael O’Keeffe who says that by the end of this school year in June, his organisation will have visited nearly 40 schools and introduced over 5,000 children to the game of golf.
“Schools have varied from one on Sherkin Island in West Cork with only eight pupils that have never experienced golf before right the way up to St Columba’s National School, a school of 500 boys in Douglas,” O’Keeffe told the column.
SNAG is also currently running two programmes for Down Syndrome Cork at the Cope Foundation while on May 11 they will be at the Irish Blind Sports 25th anniversary celebrations, introducing golf to those with impaired vision.
“We have been requested to host coaching programs for Deaf Sport Ireland which will start in June, first in Dublin then rolled out across Ireland and our continued work with The Rebel Wheelers and CAST [Cork Autism Sporting Together] is ongoing and Special Olympics continue to use SNAG equipment for their golfing athletes.”
Anything that helps golf reach every section of our community has to be applauded and be assured we will bring more of the SNAG story to these pages in the near future.
What a couple of weeks it has been for teenage golfer Olivia Mehaffey who followed up her Irish Girls’ U18 Open Strokeplay Championship victory at Roganstown Golf and Country Club with a very impressive sixth-place finish in the Helen Holm Scottish Amateur Open at Royal Troon on Sunday.
The Royal County Down golfer, who had also won the Faldo Junior Series Ireland at Slieve Russell before taking the Irish Girls Open Strokeplay title, continued her great run of form when she closed the three-round event with a two-under-par 73 on the Scottish links having opened with rounds of 75 and 77.
England’s Olivia Winning went the other way, with rounds of 70, 72 and 78 to hang on for a two-shot victory at five under par over fellow Englishwoman Poppy Finlay and Scotland’s Alyson McKechin.
Mehaffey finished on level par in a tie for sixth with England’s Rachael Goddall while Leona Maguire of Slieve Russell finished 10th at one over par and Castletroy’s Chloe Ryan on three over in a share of 12th.
The hope now is that Mehaffey will have impressed the selectors enough to make the Great Britain and Ireland team for this summer’s Junior Vagliano Trophy against Europe in France.
There were not too many people who begrudged Adam Scott his long-awaited Masters victory at Augusta National earlier this month, but the one guy who did have an axe to grind goes by the name of.... Adam Scott.
That’s Adam Scott the American actor, who stars in the US sitcom “Parks and Recreation”, not the mild-mannered Australian who became his country’s very first Masters winner three weekends ago.
Scott the actor appeared on late night US talk show “Conan” with host Conan O’Brien to vent his spleen about all the grief he’d been getting since Scott the golfer’s victory at Augusta, including bad jokes such as: “Hey, Adam. You know what’s really under par? Your acting.”
For his troubles, O’Brien made a small gesture by way of compensation. They presented Scott with his very own green jacket.
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