MIAMI, Nov 15 - The LPGA Tour announced plans on Wednesday to start testing players for drugs in 2008, leaving the game's other major tours lagging behind.

LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens said specific details of the programme would be refined over the next six to nine months in conjunction with the National Center for Drug Free Sport.

Neither the PGA Tour nor the European Tour, the biggest and most lucrative circuits in the men's game, have drug policies and both have come under mounting pressure to change tack.

"While the LPGA has had no evidence to date of performance-enhancing drug use by our players, we recognise the concerns regarding drug use in sport and the need to have a clear policy and programme in place," Bivens told a news conference in West Palm Beach.

"We want to take a proactive role in educating our members about nutritional and dietary supplements, while also promoting fair and equitable competition.

"Under the expert guidance of Drug Free Sport, we will work diligently to establish a policy that will focus on the protection of the health and safety of our members, and ensure that no one will have an artificially induced advantage to remain competitive."

Bivens, speaking on the eve of the season-ending Tour Championship at Trump International, added that details of testing methods and banned substances would be announced in the second half of the next season.

WIDESPREAD CALLS

Although golf appears to be unaffected by performance-enhancing drugs, there have been widespread calls for the game's governing bodies to put drug-testing policies in place.

"I think it certainly can be (a problem) in the future and I think we should be proactive instead of reactive," world number one Tiger Woods said earlier this year.

"We should be ahead of it and keep our sport as pure as can be, have a programme in place before guys are actually doing it, rather than knowing who's doing it and then create a programme. This is a great sport and has always been clean."

The PGA Tour, the only major sports body in the U.S. without a drug policy, has promised "very aggressive action" if a pattern of substance abuse ever develops while the European Tour says it is close to implementing its own programme.

The Royal & Ancient, which governs the game in all countries except the U.S. and Mexico, introduced drug testing for the first time at last month's world amateur team championship in Cape Town, South Africa.