My Sunday Feeling

It was bound to happen sooner or later I guess. After all, drugs have infested professional sports for years. And yet, I confess to being surprised when Martina Hingis called a press conference to announce that a) she tested positive for cocaine last summer during Wimbledon and that b) she was retiring from tennis.

I would not have given it a second thought had Hingis tested positive for being a bitch. She is pretty much despised by virtually all of her peers on the WTA tour. Which is a remarkable accomplishment given the pervasive cattiness that obtains in the women's game.

We all know about what Major League Baseball has been through. Professional football players fail drug tests all of the time. Not at the rate of cyclists and distance runners, but at a pretty good clip nonetheless. Players in the NBA have the reputation for smoking a lot of reefer. But tennis players have managed to stay out of the drug news for the most part. Off the top of my head, the only tennis player to have been accused of flunking a drug test, at least the only one of any stature, was the hot-tempered and loud-mouthed Greg Rusedski of Canada. Rusedski allegedly tested positive for nandrolone in 2004. However, he was cleared after a hearing later that year. This is the only instance that I can think of where an athlete accused of flunking a drug test was eventually exonerated.

I think there are a couple of reasons that tennis has avoided the problems other professional sports have had with players using recreational drugs. First of all, players on the ATP and WTA tours by and large lead a fairly ascetic lifestyle, if that's a word you can use when referring to zillionaires. Being a tennis player is hard work. Their daily lives pretty much consist of training, practicing and playing. It is a lonely and unglamorous life for 2/3 of them. The Aussies used to be known for partying pretty hard but they were the exception rather than the rule. Heavy drinking and use of recreational drugs are incompatible with high level performance on the tennis court.

This latter consideration was pretty much Hingis's defense at her press conference during which she hotly denied that she had used cocaine and vowed to sic her lawyers on the WTA. Which is why I was surprised that she-or any of them-would produce a dirty test. Recreational drug use is incompatible with playing tennis at a world class level.

But think about it. Why should the tennis world be any more immune to common societal ills than the real world? Tennis players are human with the possible exception of Maria Sharapova. They have a lot of money and time on their hands when they are not playing or training. Who says they are immune from temptation? Further, even intelligent people do stupid things. Suffice it to say that there aren't many MENSA candidates on either tour.

And yet, I still have to think the situation with Hingis is an aberration. Besides, tennis has bigger problems, like the spectre of players fixing matches over in the men's game. But mark my words, I guarantee you that there are players using Human Growth Hormone or HGH. Just as they are in baseball, football, cycling and track. Tennis takes a terrible toll on your body. HGH allows the muscle fibers to heal more quickly. And the only way to test for it is by pulling blood which is pretty impractical. But if they ever develop a way to test for HGH in urine or saliva, my prediction is that tennis will join the ranks of other professional sports where everybody seems to be dirty all of the time.

But here's my question to Hingis and it is the same question I basically had for Senator Larry Craig. With Craig I asked, "If you are innocent of these charges, why did you plead guilty to a lesser included offense?" To Hingis I ask, " If you really didn't do cocaine at Wimbledon, why retire?"

I think we know the answer to those simple questions.