WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Along with deciding on a schedule, booking flights and hotel rooms and working on their swings, most LPGA Tour players spent a good chunk of the 2007 season studying up on drugs.
The next time they play on Tour, some of them will be tested under a new policy that starts next year. And while they believe they are clean, some of them are leaving nothing to chance.
"I'm going to have my doctor apply for medical waivers for everything he has ever prescribed for me," U.S. Women's Open champion Cristie Kerr said. "Not necessarily any medication I'm taking now, but anything I've ever needed -- like antibiotics. The closer we are to testing, you just want to be safe."
Otherwise, Kerr said she's not worried about what a test might reveal "unless there's something in red wine I don't know about."
Paula Creamer said she spent a lot of time reading this year.
"You have to be aware of what goes in your body," she said. "We've already learned a lot about what's in protein bars."
The LPGA Tour will be the first golf organization to embark on a drug policy, and the penalties are severe -- one-year suspension for the first offense to a lifetime ban for the third offense.
There will be no difference in punishment for positive tests of performance-enhancing drugs or recreational drugs. Jill Pilgrim, the LPGA Tour general counsel who is administering the program, said marijuana would constitutes a downer and cocaine works like an upper.
"Technically, they are enhancing your performance," she said.
The LPGA Tour would not say at which tournament the random drug testing would begin, although the first opportunity will be the Women's World Cup in South Africa that starts Jan. 18.
Like many players, Karrie Webb is most concerned about supplements, knowing exactly what's in them. For someone who has been around a dozen years on the LPGA Tour, she expects the veteran players to be the most uneasy.
"It would be one thing for the next generation who grows up with drug testing when they start playing a sport," Webb said. "But here we are in the middle of our careers."
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
