In this post-Ben Johnson era, when cycling, athletics and baseball have been riven by doping scandals, and when precious few sports have been untouched by the grubby hand of banned drugs, professional golf maintains a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach.

Right now, neither the European Tour nor PGA Tour has an anti-doping policy. In Europe, they say they're in the process of "developing" a policy, while in America they're hoping to come up with a list of prohibited substances. As for when the world's two biggest tours might start testing, that's anyone's guess.

So, as it stands, our hypothetical cheating player might be banned from competing in France for a time by the French authorities, but because his golf masters have not yet formalised any sanctions regarding doping offences, he could conceivably get off scot-free.

Underpinning both major tours' lack of urgency in following the lead of so many other sports is the overwhelming belief that golf remains untainted.

"We don't think we have a drug problem in golf, " said European Tour executive director George O'Grady during the Volvo Masters at Valderrama just over a month ago.

Earlier in the year, Tim Finchem, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, insisted that just because performance-enhancing substances were prevalent in other sports, there was no reason to suspect their use in golf. "I have no evidence of players taking steroids in this sport, " Finchem added.

It was of course pointed out to Finchem that there was always likely to be a distinct shortage of evidence when the PGA Tour had no testing programme in place.

But anyway, it is true that golf does not depend on the same explosive power required for athletics, baseball and rugby for that matter. Nor does it need the stamina to cycle extraordinary distances up and down vast mountain ranges with hardly a break for the best part of three weeks.

The impressively sculpted Tiger Woods may be the dominant figure in the game, but Phil Mickelson has won three major championships in the past two years with more than a hint of a fast-food paunch. Bubba Watson, at 6'3" and 14 stone, averaged 320 yards in driving distance in the season just ended, but Fred Funk, at 5'8", 11 stone and 49 years of age, won the prestigious Players Championship in 2005.

In fact, power-hitting and the widespread lengthening of championship courses has had more to do with technological advances in club and ball manufacturing than with the increase in the number of six packs in the world game. No amount of muscle can stave off a three-putt on a fast, sloping green.

A recent NCAA survey found that a small number . . . 1.3 per cent . . . of American college golfers had taken drugs, and according to the Guardian, tests carried out by the French Golf Federation on its elite players over the past five years produced 21 positive results from 157 doping controls. The majority of the positives related to recreational drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, however, there were also positive results for salbutamol, an asthma drug which can have performance-enhancing effects.

Meanwhile, the Irish Sports Council has conducted in-competition tests at several of the main men's and women's amateur championships since 2001. But with the European Tour currently a law unto itself with regard to doping, no tests have ever been carried out at a professional event in this country.

"Look up and down the range, no one looks like they're on anything, " said Vijay Singh. "No one comes back from the off-season looking like Barry Bonds." But if aspiring golfers would probably not have been in the queue outside the Balco lab on a Monday morning, the conclusion that the game is clean, and that players would never seek to gain an illicit advantage, is naive in the extreme.

In his perceptive book The Meaning of Sport, Simon Barnes accepts that it would be foolish to ignore the cocktail of drugs Ben Johnson used to propel himself to the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics, but he prefers to concentrate more on how the drugs might have helped Johnson's mind.

"Perhaps if you had given him Smarties and told him they were go-faster pills, he would have run the same impossible 9.79 seconds, " writes Barnes. "It's not about who you are. It's about who you think you are."

Pay a visit to the practice range at any tournament, and it seems for all as if every player strikes the ball as well as the next. During the search for extra length, and increased stamina, a player might be tempted to step over the line, but when golf 's serial winners are so often the strongest mentally, drugs could also be a factor in boosting self-confidence.

"The possibility of drugs in the game is a conversation that comes up a lot among the players, " said Padraig Harrington. "Nobody can figure out if there's anything there that can help, but I'm all for testing. If there's one per cent of a doubt that somebody might be getting help, then it's no hardship to be tested."

Finchem's insistence that the PGA Tour could do without testing had been endorsed by several leading players such as Davis Love who didn't see the need to introduce doping controls "just to keep people happy and to say we're clean".

However, Greg Norman, a long-time adversary of the commissioner, accused Finchem of having his "head in the sand" and of being "asleep at the wheel". Norman suggested that with $5m in prize money on offer most weeks, some players were almost certainly cheating. "Put the rules in place, " he said.

Meanwhile, another former major champion, Nick Price, made the point that promising teenage players who were hitting the ball 280 yards were probably not going to make it. "They certainly won't be stars hitting it only that far, " Price added. "And what if they meet up with the wrong trainer? You can stop a problem in the future if you test now. You can discourage those kids from using."

But most damaging for Finchem was Tiger Woods's unequivocal support for the introduction of testing. "Tomorrow would be fine with me, " said the world number one. "I think we should be proactive instead of reactive. I just think that we should be ahead of it and keep our sport as pure as it can be."

When the LPGA Tour announced last month that it would introduce mandatory testing in 2008, Finchem shifted his position and said the PGA Tour would come up with a banned substances list, and would also inform its players of the "nature of any potential testing".

Last October, 12 players at the men's and women's World Amateur Team championships in South Africa were tested with no positive results recorded. Testing went ahead because the events are run by the International Golf Federation which is recognised by the International Olympic Committee.

Although the R&A backed the introduction of testing at the team championships, there will be no doping controls at next year's Walker Cup matches at Royal County Down which the R&A organises in conjunction with the United States Golf Association.

While it's undeniable that anti-doping policies in both Europe and the US have to be carefully thought through, it is also evident that professional golf has dragged its heels for too long . Testing is on the horizon.

"We market the guys who hit it 300 yards, " said Joe Oglivie who was beaten in a play-off by Harrington at last year's Honda Classic. "If that's your message and people see that beginning at highschool level, I think it's very naive to think that somebody down the line won't cheat. As golf gets more popular and the zeros continue to grow to the left of the decimal point, I don't think there's any doubt there will be cheaters."

After years of denial, both the PGA Tour and the European Tour appear to be gradually arriving at the conclusion that there's only one way to find out.