LJWorld.com

Mamaroneck, N.Y. — It has been a sport in recent years where players have mashed the long ball with stunning, stupefying regularity.

It has been a sport where some of the top players in the game have become visibly bigger and stronger.

It has been a sport where, for far too long, there has been no drug-testing policy or even a written rule forbidding the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

No, silly, not baseball.

Golf.

We're talking about golf.

When the U.S. Open was held four years ago at nearby Bethpage Black, I broached the possibility of golfers using steroids and nearly got laughed out of the pressroom by golf writers. You'd have thought I tried to confiscate their key card to the Marriott concierge lounge.

And the golfers themselves? They were even more incredulous.

"Golf is not like other sports," Davis Love III huffed back then.

Now here we are nearly a half-decade later with the Open once again within a King Kong pitching wedge of the Empire State Building, and nothing has changed. Golf still has no documented policy against performance-enhancing drugs. PGA Tour commissioner Bud, er, Tim Finchem told writers recently that there's no reason "to jump into the testing arena . . . without having any credible information that we have issues."

The similarities between golf and baseball are frightening. Like baseball, golf has become a game predicated on power. Like baseball during the steroid era, golf has no drug-testing policy. And like baseball during the steroid era, fans are being told that the balls are flying further because of technology.

In baseball, they used to say the juiced ball was the reason for the power surge. In golf, they say it's the juiced clubs.

It's idiotic for any sport that has grown increasingly reliant on strength to not test for steroids. Why shouldn't we be suspicious of golf when drug cheats have infiltrated practically every sport?

Baseball and football players have been caught taking steroids. Bobsledders and bikers, too. There has even been a curler and a table-tennis player suspended for steroids.

If a bobsledder is willing to cheat to stay competitive, why wouldn't a golfer who has much more to gain financially? The 125th-ranked player on the PGA Tour made $700,000 last year and the top 78 made more than a million. With that much cash involved, it's lunacy to think there aren't pro golfers looking for some kind of a pharmaceutical edge.

The top golfers on both tours - Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam - look like they just stepped out of one of those Soloflex commercials. I'm not saying these two champions are juicing, but isn't it entirely possible that lesser talents would cheat to try to catch up?

Even Sorenstam says that the strong have the best chance of surviving on tour. "The season is so long and when you're practicing every day, it wears on your body," she says. "The stronger you are, the more you can prolong your career."

Golfers use to think steroids would be detrimental because the drugs would bulk them up and rob them of flexibility. No more. In today's world of designer 'roids and human growth hormone, you can take performance-enhancing drugs and maintain a normal body type.

Today's steroids not only add strength, they have therapeutic and recuperative powers that would greatly benefit golfers.

And, so, I'll ask again: Why wouldn't golfers use steroids?

It sure would be nice if those in charge would get their heads out of the sand trap and address the question.