Sports
Why Iga Swiatek’s doping case being kept secret is bad for tennis
Iga Swiatek’s one-month suspension for unintentionally taking the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ) comes down to picograms. World No. 2 Swiatek’s positive test, recorded August 12 and communicated to her alongside a provisional suspension September 12, detected 50 picograms of TMZ per milliliter of urine, which doping experts call a trace amount.
A picogram is 1,000th of a nanogram; there are one billion nanograms in a gram. Not the sort of usage that would provide any advantage in a tennis match.
Combined with Swiatek submitting her medications and supplements to independent laboratories alongside hair samples, those numbers led the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) to accept her explanation that she had taken a contaminated dose of melatonin, which she had used to help her sleep to combat jet lag.
Here are some more numbers.
On September 20, 15 days after Jessica Pegula knocked her out of the U.S. Open and eight days after being told she had tested positive, Swiatek announced she was going to skip one of the top tournaments of the year.
“Due to personal matters, I’m forced to withdraw from the China Open in Beijing,” Swiatek said in a statement. “I’m very sorry as I had an amazing time playing and winning this tournament last year and was really looking forward to being back there. I know that the fans will experience great tennis there and I’m sorry I won’t be a part of it this time.”
The announcement came after Swiatek spent the end of the summer rightfully talking about how exhausted she was following the Olympic Games in July and August, at which she took the bronze medal after an intense period that included winning her fourth French Open in five years, competing at Wimbledon, and not winning a gold medal for which she was viewed as champion-in-waiting. Skipping a tournament due to “personal matters” seemed to fit with that narrative. Fatigue. A medical issue. Burnout. Family stuff.
Iga Swiatek at the Olympics earlier this year. (Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP via Getty Images)
Under the broadest definition, “personal matters” does cover just about anything. That said, when someone uses that phrase, the immediate understanding generally involves some sort of health or family issue. It’s personal, and generally separate from something that’s either public or professional.
There’s also an implicit boundary request in the phrase: What’s going on is my own business.
But positive doping tests and provisional suspensions handed down by an anti-doping authority are not personal matters. Those are professional matters, in a profession that is very public.
GO DEEPER
Explaining Iga Swiatek’s doping ban, why it was kept secret and what it means for tennis
The ITIA holds off on announcing any positive test for 10 days so the player has the right to appeal the provisional suspension. If the player decides to appeal, the agency keeps the findings secret, and the player generally does, too. Then the process of testing, litigation and judging unfolds behind closed doors. In Swiatek’s case, her successful appeal allowed her to play the WTA Tour Finals and the Billie Jean King Cup Finals while that process was going on.
Swiatek’s team’s statement says that she “was unable to inform the public about the ongoing investigation”. The ITIA’s code subjects its officials, employees and associates to confidentiality, but nothing explicitly prohibits a player who has tested positive and is serving a provisional suspension during an appeal from explaining what’s going on.
So, if you feel that you have been misled the past few months, then join the club. “Personal matter” doesn’t begin to describe a positive doping test and the process that ensued, and in the the long run, that less-than-transparent explanation for her absence may end up harming Swiatek more than the positive test for unintentionally taking a performance-enhancing substance that likely had no effect on her performance.
Whose decision was it to describe this as a “personal matter”? Was any consideration given to saying something else?
On Friday, Paula Wolecka, a spokesperson for Swiatek, stated in an email that Swiatek had experienced great distress because she knew she was innocent of intentionally doping and had taken contaminated medicine.
“The decisions were made with the best intentions at every stage of the process, step by step, according to current knowledge of the team and circumstances,” Wolecka wrote.
“Iga did everything in her power to act fair, to follow the ITIA’s procedures and requirements and after the decision was officially published by the ITIA, provide everyone with as many details of the process as possible to be fully transparent. Being a good human being with a strong core of values is crucial to her and she does her best to act in line with it, on and off the court.”
In a video statement Thursday, Swiatek said, “The whole thing will definitely stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Both Swiatek’s one-month suspension and the decision not to ban Jannik Sinner for his two positive tests for clostebol, an anabolic steroid, have been conducted according to ITIA protocol. Both cases have also revealed deep wells of mistrust and anger within tennis from fans and players alike, confused at players being allowed to play while under investigation. Everything has been done by the book. The book appears in need of a rewrite.
There are also plenty of hard-nosed anti-doping officials who believe the science has gotten ahead of the rulebook. Swiatek tested negative multiple times before the positive test and then again after. That would indicate that she was not in the middle of a doping cycle, and the trace amount of TMZ suggested an unintentional use as well.
Iga Swiatek playing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on November 3. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)
So perhaps provisional suspensions are not the way to go when the science says the athlete didn’t receive any benefit.
On a conference call with reporters Thursday, the ITIA’s chief executive, Karen Moorhouse, said the rules are in place to be fair to the players. “We’ve been absolutely transparent once they’ve reached an outcome,” Moorhouse said.
But is that transparent enough?
It’s true that players may not see much incentive for going public amid a period of uncertainty; that as soon as they announce they have tested positive for a banned substance and are under investigation, everyone will brand them as a cheater. Some no doubt would.
But a player is going to have to answer for the positive test eventually anyway. Would Swiatek, the ITIA and tennis be better off had they jointly come clean about this in September, rather than announcing it as done and dusted now, after Swiatek had spent the fall giving other explanations for her absence from competitive tennis?
It’s hard to not think so.
Now she has both tested positive and opted not to be “absolutely transparent” for two months. That’s not a very good combination.
It’s impossible to consider the Swiatek case without comparing it to that of Sinner, the world No. 1 in the men’s game.
Sinner tested positive for clostebol on March 10 this year at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif, and again on March 18, out of competition. The independent tribunals of the ITIA determined the now 23-year-old Italian bore “no fault or negligence” for the positive tests, and therefore wasn’t deserving of a ban. But all this only became public at the conclusion of the ITIA’s investigations and hearings in mid-August.
There wasn’t much transparency there either, and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has since challenged and appealed the ruling to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS), arguing that Sinner’s level of culpability should be upgraded to “no significant fault or negligence”, which would leave him facing a ban of up to two years.
GO DEEPER
Jannik Sinner’s doping case explained: What WADA appeal means and what is at stake for tennis
Through it all though, Sinner never explained anything to the public. He didn’t have to. He successfully appealed two provisional suspensions quickly enough to avoid missing any tournaments. Still, when the ITIA announced the details of the Sinner investigation and its ruling, much of the tennis-watching public felt like people had put one over on them.
That’s not good for anyone.
Swiatek repeatedly talked about the matter coming to a close in her video statement. Yet it’s hard to believe it has.
She will absolutely face more questions when the 2025 season begins in Australia in late December — about the doping violation, but also about why she didn’t tell us what was really keeping her off the court. So too will tennis authorities, about how a system which they say is working as designed can create situations in which so many people feel left in the dark.
(Top photo: Robert Prange / Getty Images)
Sports
Trump admin says SJSU now faces ‘impending enforcement’ for transgender volleyball scandal conflict
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FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump’s Department of Education said it has notified San Jose State University (SJSU) that it faces “impending enforcement action” for its “refusal to comply with Title IX.”
SJSU and the California State University (CSU) system filed a lawsuit earlier in March to challenge an Education Department investigation that determined the university violated Title IX in its handling of a biological male transgender volleyball player on a women’s team from 2022-24.
Now, the administration is cracking down against that resistance.
“We have provided SJSU with multiple opportunities to resolve its Title IX violations with common sense actions: separating male and female athletes based on their biological sex, keeping men out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, restoring rightfully-earned titles and accolades to female athletes, and apologizing to the women forced to forfeit competitions to protect themselves,” Kimberly Richey, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in an announcement.
“Yet, SJSU remains obstinate, choosing a radical ideology over safety, dignity, and fairness for its own students. With today’s action, the Department is putting the university on notice: comply with the law or risk losing its federal funding.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to SJSU and CSU for a response.
Brooke Slusser and Blaire Fleming of the San Jose State Spartans call a play against the Air Force Falcons on Oct. 19, 2024, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
The conflict between Trump’s administration and the school stems back to the 2024 season, when a national controversy involving transgender player Blaire Fleming triggered an election-cycle media firestorm, all during Trump’s third White House campaign.
The Education Department’s investigation has claimed, “SJSU actively recruited and allowed a male to compete on the women’s indoor and beach volleyball teams and reportedly instructed members of the coaching staff not to tell the female players that the athlete was a male.”
The investigation added that “on multiple occasions, the male athlete spiked the ball so forcefully that it knocked females on the opposing team to the ground.”
One of the standout details of the investigation’s findings was that a female SJSU player “discovered that the male student had conspired to have a member of the opposing team spike her in the face during an upcoming match. SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected this female athlete to a Title IX complaint for reportedly ‘misgendering’ the male athlete when discussing this incident in online videos and interviews.”
Former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser has included those allegations in her ongoing lawsuit against representatives of SJSU and CSU.
UNIVERSITY LEADER ADMITS SCHOOLS ARE ‘NOT A POLITICAL PARTY’ IN WARNING TO ELITE CAMPUSES
After SJSU and CSU announced they were suing the Trump administration to challenge the findings, Slusser, and other former NCAA players, came forward about their alleged experience during the scandal, and how it affected them, in recent interviews with Fox News Digital.
Slusser, who shared an apartment with Fleming at SJSU without knowing the athlete’s birth sex, became the subject of viral debate after her interview reflecting on the experience sharing spaces with Fleming.
“You find out you’re just chilling in a bed with a man that you have no idea about… I [was] unknowingly sharing a bed at that time with a man,” Slusser said, also alleging SJSU volleyball coach Todd Kress encouraged her to live in the same apartment as the trans teammate when another group of players was also looking for a final tenant.
Former Utah State volleyball star Kaylie Ray told Fox News Digital that during matches against SJSU and Fleming in 2022 and ’23, before Fleming’s birth sex was known, she had teammates suffer finger injuries from the trans athlete’s spikes.
“I had teammates who had seriously jammed their fingers, luckily not broken, but a handful of girls who had sustained minor injuries from the male player,” Ray said, adding, “We knew that if the male athlete had a phenomenal game, there was nothing we could do to stop that person.”
Ray’s Utah State team became one of five teams to forfeit at least one game to SJSU in 2024, seemingly in protest of Fleming. She says the forfeit impacted her team’s hopes of winning their fourth straight Mountain West championship.
Meanwhile, the University of Wyoming forfeited two matches to SJSU in 2024. Former Cowgirls player Macey Boggs told Fox News Digital that the decisions to forfeit the games “permanently ruined” friendships among her teammates.
“There were some of the girls who I really enjoyed, and we got along great, and then this situation came up, some conflict came up, and ultimately we went in separate directions because of that… as soon as we played in our last game, we all went in separate directions… it was hard to maintain those relationships,” Boggs said.
SJSU was plagued by a separate Title IX violation in sports that it had to resolve with the Biden administration in 2021. The university ultimately came to a $1.6 million resolution with the Department of Justice in 2021.
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The DOJ found that SJSU failed for more than a decade to respond adequately to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, of female student-athletes by an athletic trainer then working at SJSU, beginning in 2009 when female student-athletes reported that the trainer subjected them to repeated, unwelcome sexual touching.
The department and SJSU entered into a comprehensive agreement to address the findings of the investigation, which began in June 2020 during Trump’s first term.
Now, Trump’s current administration is giving the school 10 more days to comply with a series of resolution agreements to resolve the volleyball situation, or face enforcement action, including referral to the DOJ and termination of SJSU’s federal funding.
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Sports
‘I’m back’: Tiger Woods to play in TGL championship match with Masters status still unclear
Some major Tiger Woods news broke Monday night.
It had nothing to do with the Masters — not directly anyway.
The 50-year-old golfing legend will be playing competitively for the first time in more than a year as his Jupiter Links team competes against Los Angeles in the second match of the best-of-three TGL finals Tuesday night in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
TGL is a high-tech, indoor golf league that uses simulators and real surfaces, founded by Woods, Rory McIlroy and Mike McCarley in 2022. While a TGL match doesn’t present the same physical challenge as a PGA Tour event, the team event could serve as Woods’ first step toward playing at Augusta National on April 9-12.
Woods last played competitively March 4, 2025, in Jupiter’s final TGL match of that season. He missed all of the PGA season last year as he recovered from a 2024 back surgery and surgery in March 2025 for a ruptured Achilles tendon. Last fall, he underwent disk replacement surgery in his lower back.
A five-time Masters winner, most recently in 2019, Woods is listed as a 2026 invitee on the tournament website but has yet to confirm his participation.
Last month at the Genesis Invitational, a reporter asked Woods if the Masters was “off the table” for him this year. Woods answered simply, “No.”
In the opening match of the TGL finals Monday night, Jupiter lost 6-5, with Kevin Kisner narrowly missing a birdie chip from 20 feet that would have won the match. Woods was on hand as a team captain and supporter, roles he has served all season.
After the match, Woods told reporters he felt bad for his players — Tom Kim, Max Homa and Kisner — but expressed optimism that Jupiter could still come back and claim the title. If Jupiter wins Match 2, a third match will take place immediately afterward to determine the TGL champion.
“We have possibly two more matches,” Woods said. “We’re not out of this.”
Woods didn’t mention the possibility of placing himself in the next day’s lineup. After the news conference, however, TGL posted a graphic on X that showed what appears to be Woods’ torso and the words “He’s back,” along with the viewing information for Tuesday’s match.
Moments later, Jupiter Links posted a graphic on X that featured a photo of Woods and the quote, “I’m back.”
Woods will be replacing Kisner in the lineup for at least Match 2. It is unclear if Woods would take part in a possible third match.
Last week, after Jupiter clinched a spot in the finals, Woods told reporters he has been trying to play all season “but it just hasn’t worked out that way.” He added that the players had done well without him and implied that he didn’t foresee any changes ahead of the finals.
“I really don’t want to screw up the lineup,” Woods added. “I just want these guys to keep playing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sports
John Daly calls himself a ‘jacka–‘ after falling down desert hill during tournament
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Golf great John Daly shared a hilarious moment that may have been more serious after watching a video he posted on social media, calling himself a “jacka–” in the process.
Daly was in desert terrain at the La Paloma Country Club for the Cologuard Classic, when he was trying to hit a shot onto a green when he lost his footing.
As he tried to gain traction in the sand, Daly’s feet fell from under him, and he slid down a long desert hill. Multiple people got involved, voluntarily jumping down the hill to see if Daly was all right.
John Daly of the United States plays a tee shot on the first hole during the second round of the Cologuard Classic 2026 at La Paloma Country Club on March 21, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Daly left unscathed, but he did enjoy putting the theme music to the “Jackass” franchise over the video to share to the masses.
“Bellyfloppin’ in the desert,” Daly captioned the video, while shouting out his caddie, Joel Cooley, who sprang to action to see if his partner was doing fine at the bottom of the hill.
“On today’s episode of ‘jacka**’” was also seen on top of the video.
BROOKS KOEPKA RUNS TO COMFORT YOUNG GILR HIT BY GOLF CART DURING HIS VALSPAR CHAMPIONSHIP
While he doesn’t usually show off his bellyflopping, Daly remains a key figure in golf.
John Daly of the United States plays his second shot on the ninth hole during the first round of the Cologuard Classic 2026 at La Paloma Country Club on March 20, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
He spends most of his time on the course for the Champions Tour, which is former PGA Tour players 50 years and older. His most recent round came on Sunday, where he finished tied for 29th with a 6-under tournament in the Cologuard Classic.
Daly was just named the 2026 Ambassador of Golf Award honoree ahead of the Kaulig Companies Championship at the signature Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. The award recognizes those making an impact on the course as well as in their communities off the course.
“I’ve always loved this game and what it’s given me,” he said in a press release for the award. “Golf has taken me places I never imagined and introduced me to incredible people along the way. To be recognized with the Ambassador of Golf Award is truly an honor, and I’m proud to support the meaningful work being done here in Northeast Ohio.”
John Daly hits his tee shot on the second hole during the final round of the PNC Championship 2025 at Ritz-Carlton Golf Club on Dec. 21, 2025 in Orlando, Florida. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Daly’s impact on the sport is quite iconic, whether it’s his monstrous drives from the tee box, winning the 1991 PGA Championship as the ninth alternate in the field, or taking home The Open Championship in 1995 at St. Andrews, forever marking himself as a multi-time major winner.
His larger-than-life personality has always been on display, even today in silly moments like these on and off the course.
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