By Patrick Rafter
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.
Finally, I hope everybody had a happy Christmas and good luck for the New Year.