No Penalty for Singh for Using a Hormone

“I have no comments on anything,” Singh said.

Four hours later, in an unscheduled news conference, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said Singh, a 34-time tour winner and World Golf Hall of Fame member, would not face any penalties.

According to Finchem, Singh, 50, was sanctioned Feb. 19 for an antidoping violation, and he appealed. During the appeal process, tour counsel contacted the World Anti-Doping Agency “to confirm a number of technical points,” Finchem said.

At that time, Finchem said, WADA clarified that it no longer considered the use of deer antler spray to be prohibited except in cases of a failed drug test for IGF-1, which can be detected in blood. The tour conducts its drug testing by analyzing the players’ urine.

“Based on this new information, and given WADA’s lead role in interpreting the prohibited list, the tour deemed it only fair to no longer treat Mr. Singh’s use of deer antler spray as a violation of the tour’s antidoping program,” Finchem said.

Shortly before the news conference, Finchem said, he spoke with Singh on the phone and told him the tour had dropped the case.

The resolution came days after Greg Norman, in a newspaper interview in his native Australia, described the tour’s antidoping testing as “disgraceful” and called for blood testing to be adopted as quickly as possible.

The tour has a less stringent testing policy than the men’s and women’s tennis tours. Earlier this year, the international governing body of tennis announced it was instituting a biological passport program and increasing the number of blood tests administered.

Athletes under the Olympic umbrella — a group that will include golfers starting in 2016 — must provide WADA with a daily one-hour window of availability. Urine and blood samples can be collected. The PGA Tour does not follow WADA protocol in requiring players to give their whereabouts.

“We do not test players often outside of competition,” Finchem said. “We do look for situations that we think it prudent for players to recognize that we will and have and do test out of competition, and we might look for particular circumstances — I’m not going to go into the details of what those are — that are worthy of a random test in an out-of-competition setting.”

Shortly after Finchem announced the tour had dropped its case against Singh, Steve Flesch, a four-time tour winner, wrote on Twitter, “Technicalities are becoming rules and rules are becoming suggestions!”