26th December, 1998
KORDA'S POSITIVE TEST RAISES
QUESTIONS
Petr Korda's positive test to a steroid at Wimbledon raises a lot of questions but, so
far, only a few people know
exactly what the answers are.
Until I know precisely what happened, it's unfair to make any kind of judgement. But it is
an amazing situation. I'm not
prepared to make any accusation about any player on the issue of drugs.
Nobody deserves to have their name dragged through the mud unless it's clear-cut that
they've deliberately taken an
illegal substance.
There's too much innuendo about players and it is not fair on those guys who are clean -
and you have to give everybody the benefit of the doubt until it's categorically shown
they've done something wrong. Every player is different. And so is their make-up.
Some players have conditions which require medication and they can do that with permission
from the relevant authorities.
Nobody has a problem with that. But the Korda situation is unclear to everybody except
those people at the Tennis
Federation's independent appeals committee and the medical experts. They've given Korda
the benefit of the doubt and
that's all that matters at the end of the day.
My views on drug-taking are strong. If anybody is found to have deliberately taken
something to give them a
competitive edge, they should be thrown off the tour. There are no excuses for it. It's
cheating in its worst form.
Christmas week has been great, as usual. It started with two days of golf at Jack Newton's
event and finished yesterday
when I travelled down to Sydney to crank up for the AAPT Championships in Adelaide next
week by working with
Rochey. The weather in Queensland early in the week didn't allow me to practise as much as
I wanted, so I'll be getting stuck in with Rochey. I'll stay in Sydney until it's time to
go to Adelaide.
From there, it's back to Sydney for the adidas International and then down to Melbourne
for the Australian Open.
Hopefully there will be something to celebrate at the end of January.