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Saturday, April 22, 2006
LPGA stuck as niche sport
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
My first assignment at my first LPGA tournament —the year was 1984, the site Brookfield West in Roswell, the event the oddly named Potamkin Cadillac Classic — was to write about the new wave on tour. I interviewed four women who were seen as rising stars — Juli Inkster, Chris Johnson, Laurie Rinker and Lauri Peterson — and how they were about to transform the LPGA. Well, Inkster turned out to be a really splendid player and the other three less so, but here it is 22 years later and the talk around the circuit is …
The new wave of players about to transform the LPGA.
And I wish I could say I believe it. But I don’t really. I wish I could say I foresaw growth on an exponential scale for the tour I’ve always preferred to (editorial comment here) the snooty PGA, but I’ve covered too many women’s tournaments over too many years and seen too few fans and detected too little mainstream interest.
I wish it were different. I wish there was a way the LPGA could get big because people like watching women play golf against other women. I wish an LPGA golfer could become a household name without feeling the need to pose in a bathing suit. More than anything, I wish the LPGA could grow out of the niche it has occupied these last two decades.
There was a time in the late ’70s when, in the wake of Nancy Lopez’s advent, women’s golf seemed as big a deal as men’s, but the moment faded. And now, when the average fan is asked to recall a female player of a certain vintage, the first thought is of Jan Stephenson, who famously smiled for a calendar shot from a bathtub filled with golf balls, and not Pat Bradley, who won roughly twice as many events as Stephenson.
The LPGA’s latest swimsuit wearer is Natalie Gulbis, and she, as you’d guess, is tall and blond. What you might not know is that Gulbis is fifth on the money list and third in scoring average. You might not know that because — let’s face it — not that many guys care all that much about how Natalie Gulbis plays her sport. And that’s a shame.
Sherri Turner, 49, is in her 23rd year on tour. She has been around long enough to grasp that many of the concerns facing the LPGA in 1984, her rookie season, are the ones facing it today. (How to get bigger, how much skin to show, et cetera.) “I’ve kind of made it a point to keep my mouth shut,” she said Saturday after shooting a 9-under-par 63 at the oddly named Florida’s Natural Charity Championship. “But these are a lot of the same issues.”
Turner doesn’t begrudge Gulbis her swimsuit and her reality TV series. “If I looked like Natalie, I’d be doing the same thing,” she said. But here Turner touched on the bigger picture, which is that an LPGA player cannot hope to get famous simply by playing well on the tour. “The percentage of good young players is much larger [than in 1984], and especially with the Asian girls, it’s tough to separate themselves.”
Michelle Wie, who isn’t playing at Eagle’s Landing, has separated herself not by immersing herself in the LPGA but by flitting between women’s and men’s events. “I don’t like that,” Turner said. “I was a little leery when Annika [Sorenstam] did it, but she was at the top of her game and she did it once to learn from it. … I would like to see Michelle take a different route. I like the route [rookie] Morgan Pressel has taken.”
I wish I could envision a day when Morgan Pressel — or Michelle Wie, for that matter — was as big a star as Tiger Woods, but the cold truth is that even the transcendent Sorenstam remains known more for her two cut-missing rounds on the men’s tour in 2003 than for any of the 67 events she has won.
And if you care to argue with that, please note: Sorenstam goes into today’s final round with a chance to win her 68th tournament, but you won’t be able to watch her pursuit on TV. This event isn’t being televised. In a world where even college baseball and arena football gets aired, the sport graced by the most dominant athlete in North American sports couldn’t find a carrier this weekend. How shameful is that?
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Justice for the quiet man
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Now, let the howling cease. Those of us who have raised our voices from the cynics corner, lo, these many years that Larry Nelson has been passed over for the World Golf Hall of Fame may now move quietly forward. Best celebrate the belated judgement of the balloteers. No “it’s about time” chorus, and “how about the Ryder Cup captaincy?”
Leave it be, as he did at his announcement function, when he said, “There’s no way to compare the two, the Hall of Fame is so much greater.”
Be grateful that he has finally been verified, and that this might yet become a plank in his Ryder Cup platform. Ye gods, he was the leading American player in his first two competitions, unbeaten in nine matches, once taking down the vaunted Seve Ballesteros when the Spaniard was on his game.
Oh, well, there I go. Enough of it. Savor the glory and move ahead.
The story is an old one, told over and over again. Here was a guy home from wartime duty in Vietnam, an athlete of modest ability on the baseball field. Golf never got a grip on him until he was 21 years old, and if there ever was a self-made player, it was he. Coming out of that dungeon of a work place at the Lockheed plant in Marietta, he looked around for a place to reactivate his body. He’d noticed a Sam Snead Golf Center across the highway and began dropping in just to hit a few balls.
That’s how it started. Then the Ben Hogan book, “The Five Fundamentals of Golf,” about how the game should be played, and further guidance from Bert Seagraves, who gave him a job taking reservations and working behind the counter at the Pine Tree club. He was way behind. By the time they were his age, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods were already winning majors.
One morning, playing at Pine Tree, I noticed this smallish fellow in the distance working on the practice tee. He was still there when I made the turn. And still there when I finished the round. It was Larry, home from the mini-tour in Florida to work on his fractured game. He makes it sound as if it came easy (“I fell in love with it and got better every day”) but it was six years on the PGA Tour before he finally won, the Jackie Gleason Classic. The mild Nelson winning the flamboyant one’s tournament, as it were.
I don’t know that winning majors ever entered his mind, but at Oakmont in 1983 — name of the street on which he lived at Atlanta Country Club — he found himself in a shootout with Tom Watson, the defending champion. After an overnight rain delay, Nelson returned to the course, rolled in about a 60-foot putt for birdie on the 16th hole and completed the conquest. There was some seeming resentment that this mild-mannered Georgian with little hair cover should have taken down the champion. And that he should use this stage to speak of his faith. The barbs of some local media wounded him at what should have been the most joyful moment of his career.
He had already won one PGA Championship, driving in the morning rush hour from his home across town to Atlanta Athletic Club in 1981, and a second would follow in the searing heat of South Florida in 1987. Moving on into the now Champions Tour was the natural process, and winning came more frequently, 19 times, in 2000 the Player of the Year, and at the age of 58 it goes on.
The meek shall inherit the earth, it is written, but no meek ones served in the jungles of Vietnam, as did Sgt. Larry Gene Nelson — this is one for the quiet man, one who has has had to work like a field hand to earn what he got. He has served on the PGA Tour Policy Board, which speaks well of the respect in which he is held by his peers. He has been a popular figure in Japan, where he has designed courses and won four times, and with his PGA and Champions Tour victories, that adds up to a total of 33.
Not bad for a guy 5-feet-9, who didn’t get started until he was voting age, and then learned the game by reading a book. You know the hardest part of it all? He got the news three weeks ago and was sworn to secrecy until the announcement date.
“Having to sit on it all that time.”
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