Rafael Nadal, the reigning French Open champion and No. 3 ranked player in the 2013 field, made comments about tennis' steroid testing policies following his first round victory over Daniel Brands.
Nadal said he favors testing, and revealing who is being tested when, and how often. According to Nadal, this will remove the cloak of suspicion around all the competitors. He also said that tennis is "a very clean sport," and "We don't have a lot of cases of doping."
Earlier in the week, he had also stated that he does not think tennis has a performance-enhancing drug problem. "I'm always going to be with the players and I will always defend them," Nadal said. "I have confidence in my colleagues. I believe they are clean and if the (testing) results don't tell me something else, I will defend my friends."
Nadal has spoken out against the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) whereabouts rule, which requires athletes to be available at self-specified times for "out-of-competition testing" on any given day. The athletes must also give three months' notice of where they will be so they can be randomly tested.
At the BNP Paribas Masters, Nadal said, I am the first who wants a clean sport, more than anyone, believe me, but the way it (controls) are being done is, in my opinion, not right. I would love to have a few changes. I think that's too much to have to say every day of your life where you are."
Due to his muscular physique, powerful serves and overwhelming style of play, Nadal has been the victim of a fair amount of steroid suspicion. He has never failed any drug test, however. Just last year, Nadal tweeted about a surprise drug test early in the morning.
His tweet read, "8:30 in the morning!!!Just finished passing a surprise antidoping test...it was expected after everything...but I'm happy it's like this!"
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