Just a note that professional tennis has more rigorous and random drug testing than almost any other sport. Pro players have to, literally, let the testing federation know their location and planned locations at any given time. The player can be notified in no more than 24 hours that a drug test is required, and tests are routinely conducted for most players at each of the four Grand Slam majors every year. Witness the
recent case of Maria Sharapova, the world's richest female athlete, and--formerly--one of the biggest draws in any tennis tournament. Also remember that the professional tennis "season" is effectively year-round; the top singles and doubles players compete at year-ending tournaments, but even for the lower-ranked players the only "off-season" is the last three weeks of December and the first week of January. That means pro tennis players--unlike sports like track & field, bicycling, football, etc.--are being drug tested every month of the year.
So, no, I very much doubt any pro tennis player gets away with performance enhancing drugs of
any kind. In Sharapova's case, she had been taking the prescribed drug meldonium (mildronate) since 2006. It was added to tennis's banned list last January 1; she was tested a few weeks later at the Australian Open and, zap, one of the biggest names in all of the sport was outta there. The drug is not on the banned list in many sports because there are still questions about whether or not it can actually be a performance enhancer in healthy athletes.
Abraham: watch more women's tennis. I wager you'll be smitten numerous times.
An aside, I mentioned years ago on the Forum that I played tennis, and got some snarky comments, implying I should turn in my man-card. But that was from guys who obviously didn't follow the modern game, and maybe remembered seeing a match in the '70s on clay where the points consisted of two 5'9" guys hoisting innumerable, 20 mph moonballs back and forth.
Today, the average height of all male pro players is 6'2.2" (6'4" and over is common; the top U.S. player is John Isner at 6'10") and 130 mph serves are de riguer; the current record is over 150 mph. Heck, even mid-level recreational players commonly serve over 100 mph...even in the 40+ and 55+ age groups (much of that due to improvements in racquet and string technology). It ain't your grandfather's game.
I started playing in my 30's, almost 30 years ago, partly because I didn't have the patience for golf and I wanted to find a sport I could continue to play as I grew old. And it's about as good a cross-training sport as you can find. It requires both static and dynamic balance, excellent burst-mode footwork, good flexibility and cardiovascular conditioning, and superb distance judgement and eye-hand coordination. Definitely useful in proficient shooting of any type.
I've always augmented tennis with weight training and some martial arts and aerobic work, but otherwise it is, IMHO, just about the perfect participatory sport. And you can even play for a USTA national championship in age categories in five-year increments from 30 to 90! It's also an individual sport--unlike other great cross-training sports, like basketball and soccer--which makes it about as close as you can come to a combination of chess and boxing...with a lot of short-distance sprints thrown in.
And did I mention that tennis is one of the very few sports where men and women can compete together...even for amateur and professional championships?
P.S. That this year's Roland Garros (French Open) is without either Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer (the Fed had played in
65 straight Grand Slam majors prior to this) in the second week, speaks to the inevitable fact that the "Golden Era" of modern tennis will inexorably turn the page to the next chapter, and we can only hope that someone will emerge to challenge Novak Djokovic in the kind of epic battles we saw between Federer and Nadal.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
