No "anti-doping tests were conducted at this year's Shanghai Masters, one of the eight mandatory Masters 1000 events on the men's ATP circuit," according to Stuart Fraser of the LONDON TIMES. The tournament offered the "highest" pay check at any Masters tournament this year of $1.04M for the champion. Tournaments are "required to ensure suitable facilities, such as a separate room, are made available for anti-doping officials, but often these go unused." A source close to another event confirmed that "some years testers do not turn up at all." One "high-profile" player said that "it is more common for him not to be tested at tournaments." Another ranked inside the top 50 says that he was tested "about eight times this year," despite playing more than 20 tournaments and 65 matches. This "fits" with concern from Roger Federer at the end of last year about the lack of testing in the sport. Tennis's anti-doping program, which is run by the Int'l Tennis Federation, operates on an annual budget of about $4M. This is regarded by a number of figures within the sport as "not enough to combat the threat of performance-enhancing substances." ITF Science & Technical Department Exec Dir Dr. Stuart Miller said, "While in an ideal world, you would get perfect detection and deterrence by testing every player for every substance every day of the year, whether they were in or out of competition, that's just not feasible. So what you have is an anti-doping program that varies from year to year. You do testing some days and not others and that applies both in and out of competition. You don't test at every single event" (LONDON TIMES, 12/22).
