Henrik Stenson says Viagra is the only PED that PGA Tour golfers need

Henrik Stenson, despite the hoopla surrounding John Daly and Tiger Woods over the past couple of weeks, pays little attention to the drug testing the PGA Tour performs on a semi-random basis.

And though he has been tested for illegal substances about three times per year on average, the world’s third-ranked golfer believes the only drug that can help a player hit ‘em “long and straight” is one that can do likewise for a certain private part of his anatomy.

“Viagra might be the only one that’s going to get you anywhere,” Stenson quipped Wednesday during a pre-Valspar Championship press conference. “I don’t know what else you take for performance enhancement in golf.”

Stenson said he provided the Tour with a sample during last week’s WGC-Cadillac Championship (he finished tied for fourth) and that he tends to do so most often at the start of the season.

“I’ve been tested at Honda, [WGC-Cadillac] Match Play, Doral -- last week I had to pee in a cup there,” Stenson said. “It’s always something in the early part of the year. I’ve been tested at Akron [WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in August]. Can’t remember. Yeah, early in the spring it seems to be quite a lot.”

Stenson injected some levity into a situation that Tour officials see no humor in and would just as soon not discuss. With unsubstantiated and later retracted accusations leveled at Woods late last month, and Daly this week calling the testing policy “a joke,“ Tim Finchem’s troops have been busy of late.

After journeyman golfer Dan Olsen accused Woods of being on suspension for failing a doping test, the Tour, which actually announces PED-related suspensions, took the unusual step of issuing a public denial of such claims. (The Tour’s vehement rebuttal of his assertion, as well as that of Woods’ agent, forced Olsen to recant his allegation.)

Then, when Daly ripped the Tour for conducting drug tests that were not random, Ponte Vedra fired off a missive averring that Long John was not a target of testing and that the tests were, indeed, random.

Sort of.

“It’s random, but if the Tour has suspicion that there is an issue, they have the right to selectively test a player,” Joel Schuchmann, the Tour’s communications director, told SB Nation via email on Wednesday in regards to a statement distributed earlier in the day that said, “drug testing on the PGA Tour is both random and selective.”

As far as Stenson was concerned, he had no problem with the way the Tour administered the tests but he seemed to side with Daly on the “randomness” issue.

“Both yes and no,” he said in response to a question about whether the inquiries were indiscriminate.

“I think the easiest thing would almost to do everyone early, middle and late [in the season], and then you can have a couple random every now and then,” Stenson said. “Get everyone on a few occasions. I don’t know how it works, who gets tested and how often and so on.”

As for how many Tour members would pass a hypothetical ED-related scrutiny, well, thankfully, no one’s testing for that as far as we know.