Finchem's comments come after Scotland on Sunday reported that golf's govering body, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, is working on a new drugs code.

It said the move was partly in response to Australian golfer Craig Parry's claims that there was widespread use of beta-blockers and partly because golf was in with a chance of becoming an Olympic sport.

The paper claimed random testing of players, conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency, could begin as early as this year.

"In neither case were we persuaded that the particular suggestions or comments that were made at those times indictated a need to make changes or policies," he said.

"We don't recognise a definable list of so-called performance enhancements in this sport.

"Nobody has yet to make a case that there is such an enhancement."

Beta blocker debate

The theory is that beta-blockers, a prescription drug that lowers the heart-rate and steadies the nerves, could help a player's putting stroke and have a general calming effect during high-pressure moments.

Finchem said when beta blockers was first raised there were a number of players who had been prescribed them for various conditions but they gave them up because it hindered their performance rather than helped it

"The conclusion was that it hurt their ability to play golf which clouded this arguement that somehow it was a performance enhancer because the players who had prescriptions indicated they couldn't play very well with it and they discarded it," he said.

He said it was a different story with other sports.

"It's different in the totally athletic endeavours of some of the other sports, I think, " he said.

"But we do not feel at this juncture that this is a significant problem (for us)."