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Teeing Off: Fighting for Five The LPGA messed up by not letting Annika Sorenstam go the distance
By Gary Van Sickle
Among mere mortals Sorenstam is the hottest golfer on the planet. She's the first woman to shoot a 59, and last week at the Twelve Bridges Golf Club she was gunning for her fifth straight victory, which would've tied the LPGA record set by Nancy Lopez in 1978. Sorenstam, though, was never in contention and finished 43rd. Still, her run at Lopez's record had jumped the LPGA to the front page, a giant leap for women's golf, and pushed you-know-who out of the public's consciousness, if only for a week or so. When Lopez was burning it up, she appeared on television with Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Bob Hope and Dinah Shore. Sorenstam's gig on Monday morning -- the kind of publicity that comes the LPGA's way about as often as Halley's Comet -- affirmed that the tour again had some sizzle. That's what makes the LPGA's decision to shorten the Longs Drugs Challenge from 72 to 54 holes, thereby diminishing Sorenstam's chances of catching Lopez, so unfathomable. Here was an opportunity bounding toward the tour on a big hop, but the LPGA morphed into Bill Buckner and let it dribble into rightfield. Last Thursday, Sorenstam opened the tournament with a 73, putting her seven strokes behind Pak. With three rounds to play that's a manageable deficit. But when the tour's brass truncated the event to 54 holes after an all-day downpour on Friday, Sorenstam's task became much more difficult, a fact that was lost on no one except, it seems, the LPGA. The event's sponsor understood the magic of the moment. "This train only stops at the station once in my lifetime," said Brian Flajole, the tournament director. "What would major league baseball do if Mark McGwire was going for the home run record and the last game of the season got rained out? We wanted to play 72 holes." What was the tour thinking? LPGA official Jim Haley told The Sacramento Bee that there wasn't enough time to get the 81 players who made the cut through 36 holes in a day, which meant there would be -- horrors! -- a Monday finish, and, "Who's going to come out on Monday to watch?" he said. If Sorenstam had gotten into contention, Jim, the entire world, that's who. Besides, does the LPGA have so many potential sponsors waiting in the wings that it can ignore a reasonable request from one of them? Funny, I could've sworn the tour had a two-week hole in its schedule this month. The idea that 81 golfers can't play 36 holes in a day is also questionable. The PGA Tour got 52 players through 36 holes at the BellSouth Classic on the Sunday before the Masters, even though the TPC at Sugarloaf is one of the longest, toughest walks on Tour, and cold, gusty winds slowed play. On the LPGA, though, getting in 72 holes clearly isn't a priority, perhaps because more than a third of its tournaments go only 54 holes. You can look at Sorenstam's scores and deduce that going the extra yard would've been pointless, that she wasn't playing well enough to win anyway. You can look at the putting stats and see that she ranked 81st -- dead last -- for the week. What the numbers don't tell you is that with one fewer round to play, Sorenstam altered her style of play. "Looking back, I felt as if time was running out even though I had two more days," Sorenstam said on Monday. "I started pushing and pushing, which is not my game. That's my own fault. I learned a lesson: That's not the way to play." An informal survey of the players in Sacramento found little support for either a double round on the weekend or a Monday finish. "You can't make rulings for one person," said Juli Inkster. Helen Alfredsson was more direct. "This is not Annika's tour," she said. "We've played 54 holes before and there wasn't any argument. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't be talking about this." Alfredsson was right, but imagine what we would be talking about if a different decision had been made, and Sorenstam had had the chance to hole a few putts.
Issue date: April 30, 2001
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