Singh to sue PGA Tour over deer antler spray

Former world number one Vijay Singh is suing the PGA Tour for damages, despite being cleared of a doping offence last week after admitting to using deer antler spray.

Singh admitted in January to using the spray, which contains small amounts of IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor-1), a growth hormone on the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and PGA Tour list of prohibited substances.

The three-time Major winner told Sports Illustrated he used the spray "every couple of hours . . . every day" and was "looking forward to some change in my body."

Although he had not failed a test — and no test even exists — that was treated as a violation of the Tour’s anti-doping program and Singh, according to the lawsuit, was suspended for 90 days on February 19th.

However, after he appealed the Tour contacted WADA who said that “it no longer considers the use of deer antler spray to be prohibited unless a positive test results.”

The lawsuit, filed today in New York, said the Tour’s actions left Singh “humiliated, ashamed, ridiculed, scorned and emotionally distraught” and added: “Singh seeks damages for the PGA Tour’s reckless administration and implementation of its Anti-Doping Program.

“After exposing Singh, one of the PGA Tour’s most respected and hardest working golfers, to public humiliation and ridicule for months, and forcing Singh to perform the type of scientific analyses and review that the PGA Tour was responsible for performing, the PGA Tour finally admitted that the grounds on which it sought to impose discipline were specious and unsupportable.”

A statement from Singh’s lawyer, Peter R Ginsberg, accused the Tour of “violating its duty of care and good faith”.

It added: “As the PGA Tour could have known by conducting some basic testing and research, the product that Singh sprayed contained no active biological ingredient and could not possibly have provided any performance enhancement.”

Singh was also quoted in the statement as saying: “I am proud of my achievements, my work ethic and the way I live my life. The PGA Tour not only treated me unfairly, but displayed a lack of professionalism that should concern every professional golfer and fan of the game.”

Speaking when the case against Singh was dropped, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem admitted that using deer antler spray resulted in amounts in the body that “couldn’t be distinguished, even if you had an accurate test, with the amounts that you might take into your body from milk.”

He added: “The fact of the matter here is, as some people in the medical community pointed out when this matter came up and now Wada has looked into it and concluded on their own, it’s just not worth having it on the (prohibited) list in that context.”

The PGA Tour declined to comment on the lawsuit.