My attention was captured when Gary “Newsworthy” Player sparked a flame at Carnoustie with his insinuation that steroids and/or enhancement drugs have a building presence in golf. He did not mention on which tour, if any, the competitor(s) that confessed to him compete. My naive response in this blog space was to snidely remark that Player was after an attention grab, that he got it, sating his appetite for the time being.

As expected, responses poured in from Wolfrum, Judge Smails, and other worthwhile sources. My initial affront was replaced by a need to do a bit of research (only a bit) to determine what benefit these enhancers could provide.

Here are the sites that I visited this morning: Coolnurse.com, an interesting little place on the web that provides a cornucopia of information on taboo and essential health topics; Peel Public Health, a the ministry of a region just outside Toronto, Ontario; a site called Slate.Com, which turned up an interesting counterattack on all forms of enhancement. My subsequent points have their genesis in these articles.

If we have a rational bone in our bodies, and a sentient presence in our mind, then we know that steroids are bad for us over the long haul. The edginess, mood swings, outbursts, and obsessions associated with steroid use seemingly go against all that is proper and helpful for professional golfers. So does booze, however, but many golfers (most notably John Daly, David Feherty and Laura Baugh) abuse the stuff. Don’t even get into the calming effects of cigarettes on the tours! Many golfers swear by them, even as their lungs turn into a gooey mess of ineffective alveoli.

The reality is, most people who get into this stuff do so because they are uneducated, at an under-educated stage of their lives, or just plain desperate. You cannot opt to ingest something that will harm you when you are in your right mind, unless you are beyond desperation.

The first trenchant fact of the whole discussion is, what constitutes an unnatural aid? Certain surgeries are unnatural but accepted. What if a female golfer underwent breast reduction surgery, then shot to the top of the money and victory lists? What if a cure had been found for Casey Martin’s Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome, and he had prospered on the PGA Tour? Heroism or cheating?

The second one is, how many enhancers are we up against? Anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, creatine, DHEA, dietary supplements, and the list goes on. The odds indicate that there will be use and abuse as the new millennium continues, in golf and other sports, in teaching and other professions, by teenagers, seniors, and every age group in between. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and just as soon as guidelines are developed by the PGA Tour or any other body, new enhancers will enter the fray and render those guidelines obsolete or at least outdated.

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