Anti-doping in tennis: what the programme asks of you

There are 2 populations worth putting side by side. The Registered Testing Pool is a named list of the sport's highest-priority players, published by the ITIA and running to a few hundred names. Strict liability covers everybody who steps onto a court at a sanctioned event.

So a player ranked 380, with no doctor, no team nutritionist and a supplement shelf assembled from a shop in whatever city the tournament is in, carries the same legal responsibility for what is in her body as a top seed with a staff of 6. The rules are identical; the support could hardly be more different.

That gap is where most of the trouble in tennis anti-doping actually happens, and it is the part the official material does not really address, because the official material is written to state rules rather than to help you survive them.

Who runs it and where it applies

The International Tennis Integrity Agency took over the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme on 1 January 2022, having been formed in 2021 to replace the Tennis Integrity Unit. The ITF is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code, and the programme implements the Code's mandatory provisions as a joint effort of the ITF, the ATP, the WTA and the Grand Slam Board.

The rules apply at ITF, ATP, WTA, Grand Slam, Olympic, Paralympic, Davis Cup, Billie Jean King Cup, Hopman Cup and United Cup events. If you are competing in any of those, you are inside the programme, whatever your ranking.

The distinction that costs people

Two things get confused constantly, and confusing them is how a player ends up giving a sample she was not expecting to give.

Whereabouts filing applies to the Registered Testing Pool. The ITIA describes the 2026 pool as including, but not limited to, the top 100 men and women by singles ranking, the top 10 by doubles ranking and the top 10 men, women and quad wheelchair players. Treat that as a description of priority rather than a formula: the pool is selected against international standard criteria, published as a named list, and revised through the year. Players on it file their location for every day of the year through ADAMS, the WADA platform.

Out-of-competition testing applies to everyone. Every player is subject to it at all times, whether or not they are in the pool. The pool determines who has to tell the ITIA where they will be. It does not determine who can be tested.

A whereabouts failure, for those in the pool, is any combination of 3 missed tests or filing failures inside a 12-month period. Samples can be urine, blood, or dried blood spot, which is the newer method and the one most players have not yet met.

Strict liability, said plainly

If a prohibited substance is found in your sample, the violation is established. Not knowing how it got there does not undo it. It may reduce what happens next, sometimes to nothing, but it does not stop the finding.

The practical translation is uncomfortable and worth stating without softening: you are responsible for everything you swallow, including things handed to you by people you trust, and including things nobody intended you to swallow.

The standard of proof is comfortable satisfaction of the tribunal, which sits above the balance of probabilities and below beyond reasonable doubt. Once presence is established, the burden of explaining it moves to you.

Where the nutrition side actually bites

This is the part I deal with for a living, and it is the part where players are most exposed.

Supplements are not regulated as medicines anywhere that matters. Products get contaminated during manufacture on shared lines, they get mislabelled, and in some markets they are deliberately spiked. None of that is exotic and none of it requires bad intent from anybody you have met.

Three things reduce the risk, and only three.

Buy only third-party batch-tested products. Informed Sport and NSF Certified for Sport test batches and publish results. A product with a clean brand reputation and no batch certification is not the same thing and should not be treated as though it were.

Keep a log. Product name, manufacturer, lot number, dose, dates. Photograph the label and the batch code. Keep the tub after it is empty. If you ever need to explain a finding, this log is the difference between an argument you can make and an argument you cannot.

Check every medication before the first dose. Not after. Global DRO covers most markets and takes 2 minutes. Cold and flu remedies are the classic trap, and in several countries over-the-counter painkillers are combined with substances that are prohibited at all times.

I would add a fourth that is not about products at all: be careful about who else touches your body. Creams, sprays and treatments applied by other people have caused findings. If someone is putting something on your skin, you want to know what is in it, and if they cannot tell you, the answer is no.

Medication and TUEs

A Therapeutic Use Exemption is what allows you to take a prohibited substance for a genuine medical condition. The timing rules differ depending on who you are.

International-level players and those in the relevant pools apply prospectively, before they use the medication. A retroactive TUE is available only in limited circumstances, such as a medical emergency, insufficient opportunity to apply, or lower-level competition. Under the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme a retroactive application must generally be submitted no later than 5 working days after an adverse analytical finding is reported, and the ITIA may extend that for good cause.

National bodies then add their own deadlines and routes on top. The LTA, for example, works to 10 working days for players outside its pools. That is national guidance rather than the global default, which is exactly why checking your own federation's page beats trusting any general article, including this one.

A doctor's prescription is a document explaining why you want a TUE, and a different thing from the TUE itself. The two get confused often enough that it needs stating.

What happens if there is a finding

Knowing the shape of this in advance is worth something, because the first hours are when people damage their own case.

You receive a pre-charge notice and an opportunity to respond. The ITIA reviews your response, may request further information or interview you and others. If there is a case to answer, you are formally charged, and you have 20 days to respond and say whether you admit or deny it.

A hearing goes before a panel of 3 independent experts in law, medicine or science with no links to the sport's bodies. Appeals against a provisional suspension go before the tribunal chair alone.

For specified substances and certain other violations, a player may accept a voluntary provisional suspension, which is credited against any eventual sanction. Provisional suspensions for non-specified substances are mandatory rather than optional, and become public after a short period unless successfully appealed. Whether and when a voluntary one becomes public follows its own rules once formalised. Either way this is a real decision with consequences in both directions, and not one to take without a lawyer who does this work specifically.

What to do in the first day: say nothing publicly, request analysis of the B sample, engage a lawyer with anti-doping experience, and preserve everything. Every container, every receipt, every packet, your log. Evidence that exists is worth more than evidence you remember.

The player this article is really for

Not the top seed. She has a team, and someone on it already does all of the above.

It is for the player grinding through ITF events on a ranking that does not pay for a nutritionist, buying protein in an unfamiliar city, taking something for a cold in a country where she cannot read the box, and carrying exactly the same strict liability as the woman on Centre Court.

The programme was designed neither to catch her nor around her, and that difference matters when something goes wrong. The protective work costs almost nothing: certified products, a log, Global DRO before the first dose, and a rule about who touches your skin. It takes an hour to set up and it is the cheapest insurance in the sport.

Mandatory education exists too. The Tennis Integrity Protection Programme, TIPP, is an e-learning course that players and officials must complete every 2 years as a condition of eligibility, and it covers anti-corruption alongside anti-doping. Do it properly rather than clicking through it. It is the one hour where the sport actually explains itself to you, and the content is kept current with the rules.

Common questions

Educational material. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the rules of your own federation or anti-doping organisation, which prevail in all cases. Anti-doping rules change annually; check the current version before relying on anything here.