Martina Hingis and Roger Clemens handle drug accusations slightly differently.

When Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine at Wimbledon last year she called the accusation “horrendous” and “monstrous” then promptly retired. She did have a hair test to prove that she never took the white stuff but it was too little too late.

I just faxed the results of a hair test to my doctor. A hair test tells me what minerals I’m missing – plenty – and what toxins are in my body. My test didn’t find any cocaine either. I tried it once but my nose got all clogged up. I didn’t like the feeling of that at all.

Anyway, by the time Hingis’ positive test was processed by the drug testing lab, there may not have been any cocaine left in her body and that could explain why the hair test showed nothing. The International Tennis Federation didn’t buy the hair test result. They slapped her with a two year ban.

Contrast this with Roger Clemens. Clemens is one of the best baseball pitchers of all time – only seven pitchers have won more games than he has. He’s been accused of taking performance enhancing drugs by his trainer who says he injected Clemens in the butt with steroids.

Clemens first step was to do…nothing. His lawyer issued a statement denying the charges but Clemens took his time in responding. Why? Instead of saying something dumb in the heat of the moment, he was very corporate about the whole thing. He took his time so he could devise a strategy to deal with the public perception of the accusation.

Consider Floyd Landis for instance. Right after he tested positive for high levels of testosterone at the 2006 Tour de France, he blurted out a lot of silly stuff. Among other things, he blamed alcohol for his positive test. Clemens, on the other hand, put up a video statement on his foundation’s website and got 89-year-old Mike Wallace out of mothballs to interview him on the television show 60 Minutes.

Clemens is in a different situation than Hingis because baseball didn’t test for performance enhancing drugs when he allegedly used steroids. He’s fighting his trainer’s sworn statements, not a positive drug test. But I bring this up to show you the newest strategy for dealing with drug accusations: P.R. You still deny the charges vehemently but it’s done in the same way that a company might handle bad publicity: every step is planned and calculated.

Notice that it doesn’t really make much difference. If you sound silly or call the accusations horrendous we don’t believe you because you went on to lose the case and get a two year suspension. If you crank up the P.R. machine we don’t believe you either because it comes across as way too calculated.