A Variety of News Articles

Although I've been keeping up the posts this week, I am in fact on vacation in Disneyworld with friends. I haven't had time to do swing analyses and such, so I haven't tried. And while the trip is almost over, it's still going to be a couple of days before I'm back in North Carolina. So today I'm just linking you to some interesting news bits that I've run across -- in-between flights to Mars, fireworks displays and trips to a comedy club run by monsters, that is.



I found articles at both Golfweek and Golf Digest about Catriona Matthew's appointment as 2019 Solheim Cup captain. I don't think this is any real surprise, as that competition will be held in Perthshire, Scotland. Still, it's nice to know that the Euro team didn't drag out what really should be a no-brainer.

Golf.com has a neat article about a new Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Beer Pong Golf. To quote the article:

The venture was launched on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter earlier this summer, and in a few days it had sailed past its goal to raise $20,000. As of Thursday morning, 874 backers have poured $138,274 into the project

The irony here is that something simple like this may be a bigger draw to new golfers than some of the more publicized (and expensive) attempts to create a simple entry point. This is a grassroots, play-it-in-the-backyard approach that could become addictive.

I also found two articles about the new Titleist AVX ball. Golf Digest focuses on the initially limited distribution while Golfweek focuses on the construction. But neither article is very long because the ball is so new.

And finally, Golf Digest has an article about how Michael Phelps is helping Tiger Woods -- and other athletes -- deal with the various drug-related depression problems and such that are becoming more common among star athletes.

Those are the interesting bits I've seen between vacation highlights. Hopefully you'll enjoy them. (Especially the Beer Pong Golf. That really sounds like fun!)

Vijay's Drug Case

This is a short post because I've been on jury duty plus I've got some internet problems.

Last week I did a post called If It's Good Enough for the Deer... when the PGA Tour and the World Anti-Doping Agency (usually shortened to just WADA) announced that deer antler spray wasn't an illegal drug after all. I think most people missed that post because I put up two posts that day. I have two reasons for bringing it back up.

First, it was basically a rant about the slippery slope of drug testing -- a problem that I don't think is being taken seriously enough. As I pointed out in that post, IGF-1 is found in the milk you buy at the grocery store. And not only is IGF-1 difficult to test for, but no one has determined at what level IGF-1 ceases to be part of a healthy diet and becomes instead an illegal drug. This begs the question: Is it illegal for athletes to drink milk? This is a sloppy way of testing for drugs.

Which brings up my second point -- namely, that drug testing is dangerously close to becoming a witch hunt. Don't misunderstand me. Drug testing has become a necessary part of modern sports. But between sloppy regulatory examples like IGF-1 and the inherent problem of athletes whose bodies may naturally manufacture a greater amount of, say, testosterone than their competitors (is their testosterone level illegal, even though it's natural?), how do we define "illegal drug levels" in a way that's fair to all athletes?

The legal suit being brought against the Tour by Vijay and his people is the natural result. Again, let me be perfectly clear -- I don't like this move. It smacks more of revenge than justice. But it's the inevitable result of the previously-listed problems, and we're probably going to see more suits like this. Vijay's suit won't solve anything beyond polarizing people on both sides of the issue even more than they are now.

What WADA and the various sports organizations need to do is re-evaluate the entire procedure for determining what really constitutes doping -- what specific drugs and what levels of those drugs truly result in a performance boost, as well as how they will determine whether an elevated level of such drugs is natural or induced illegally. I think they also they need to reconsider including drugs such as caffeine and IGF-1 which are common in normal foods. Down that way lies madness.

To be blunt, this whole thing is just getting silly. Somewhere along the line, calmer heads will have to prevail. But I'm afraid I don't see it coming any time soon.

If It's Good Enough for the Deer...

I guess this post comes under the "Mike's Ranting Again" heading, although it's not a rant per se. I'm just a little frustrated with the sports world in general.

You couldn't miss the talk about Vijay Singh and the notorious deer antler spray yesterday. (If you did, you can get the basics from this ESPN news post.) The big news was that the Tour wasn't going to suspend Vijay for using it after all. The World Anti-Doping Agency (hereafter referred to as WADA) sent a message to the Tour which said, as ESPN reported it:

"We're talking about a determination that was made by scientists at WADA that relate to the consumption through deer-antler spray of a technically violative substance, IGF-1, but in looking at it, the scientists concluded it resulted in infinitesimal amounts actually being taken into the recipient's body,'' Finchem said. "Amounts that couldn't be distinguished even if you had an accurate test with the amounts that you might take into your body from milk, et cetera.

"In a case where, for whatever reason, you managed to take in enough IGF 1 so that it did trigger a positive reading ... it's not possible today. Because a positive reading means that you're surpassing a certain level. There hasn't been any level ever set.''

Finchem said that if a suitable test comes along, players would be responsible if they were deemed to have too much IGF-1 in their system, based on WADA guidelines.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but -- and here's where my rant comes in -- we've got an "illegal" substance for which (1) no legal level has been set and (2) even if you had a level you could test for, there's no accurate test to determine whether your actual blood level surpasses it or not. Then, to make matters worse, WADA has decided that deer antler spray doesn't have enough IGF-1 to matter anyway.

And here's the really funny part... did you notice that part about "...Amounts that couldn't be distinguished even if you had an accurate test with the amounts that you might take into your body from milk..."? That's right, people -- IGF-1 is in common dairy milk. That's why the WADA statement made the apparently contradictory remark that the insignificant amount of IGF-1 in deer antler spray could still cause an illegal level to show up in testing.

Should such a test ever become accurate enough to bother with, that is.

Riddle me this, Batman: How can you justify punishing athletes in any sport for using IGF-1? Is WADA going to declare milk an illegal substance too?

Look, I don't have a problem with drug testing... but it's starting to look as if drug testing is the newest form of witch hunting!

Doug Barron's name popped up during yesterday's debates, and it should have. Barron, you may remember, was suspended for taking testosterone because it was medically determined that his was too low. I don't question Barron taking doctor-recommended treatment at all. However, I question the right of WADA (or any other testing body) to determine any level for testosterone and honestly expect me to believe that they know what is normal for every man on the planet. That is PURE IDIOCY!

Human bodies don't come off an assembly line, each manufactured to exactly the same specifications. To think any regulatory agency can determine such specs is the height of arrogance.

I realize this is a slippery slope. Doping is a real problem in sports. But suppose my body naturally makes more of, say, testosterone than most other athletes. The current approach to drug testing will penalize me for simply being me. If I enter the sport with naturally high levels, it will be assumed that I'm doping. This is a problem that the drug testing bodies have no adequate answer for as yet.

Cleaning up the blood doping problem in sports isn't nearly as neat as the the major sports agencies would like us to believe... and golf's ruling bodies are about to find out just how tough it is. These two cases -- the poor handling of Barron's case and what many will see as preferential treatment for Vijay concerning the deer antler spray -- could very well open Pandora's box. You better get ready.

And you can start by having a nice cold glass of milk. You're going to need your energy. Before they outlaw it, that is.