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Making the best of it On board the LPGA's flight across the country
After the NFL, then NASCAR and Major League Baseball all announced plans to take the weekend off to mourn the losses in New York and Washington, the LPGA Tour quickly followed suit and cancelled the Safeway Classic after initially intending to play the event. The tour then faced a new dilemma: how to get its players and officials from Portland, Ore., to the next tournament stop in North Augusta, S.C., some 2,800 miles across the country. While the Asahi Ryokuken International Championship is only in its first year of existence, the event has now taken on added importance because it is the last in which players can earn money toward exempt status in 2002. Some players began to pile into cars and vans for the long drive; others considered using their original airline tickets come Sunday night. After an earlier attempt to charter a plane proved too costly, most everyone's plans changed when Tournament Golf Foundation, Inc., the nonprofit organization that runs the Safeway Classic, offered to put up $50,000 toward the $85,000 needed for a charter. Tournament director Tom Maletis made the announcement at an impromptu players' meeting, but some still balked at paying $350 for a nonstop flight across the U.S. Scotland's Janice Moodie wondered why the tour, with $750,000 in a special catastrophe fund, didn't make up the $35,000 difference. Nancy Bowen, a member of the executive committee, grabbed her cell phone and called commissioner Ty Votaw. In the meantime, a small group of women -- Laura Diaz, Jackie Gallagher-Smith, Maggie Will, Jen Hanna, Nancy Scranton and Vicki Goetze-Ackerman -- decided to contribute sums ranging from $2,000 to $7,000 toward the charter. The cost was reduced to $200 per passenger. Still, there were some objectors. "I just want to know if this $50,000 is to secure the fact that we are going to have a tournament next week," said Patty Liscio. Dottie Pepper, with her famous take-charge attitude, quickly quieted the room. "Isn't your safety worth $350?" asked Pepper, her eyes bulging and the veins in her neck straining. "The fact that you will know everyone on the plane instead of flying with a group of strangers has to be worth something." Despite Pepper's reassurance, veteran Michelle Estill was not soothed. "It makes me nervous to fly with the entire tour," she confided after the meeting. "I worry that something could go wrong with the plane and the whole tour could be wiped out." The flight was scheduled to depart at 2 p.m Saturday afternoon from Aircraft Aviation, a small complex just 1,000 yards from Portland International Airport. By 11:30 a.m. that day, most every player and caddie had gathered to make the trip. Everyone pitched in and helped. Heather Bowie and Gail Graham led the caddies in loading luggage into pickup trucks that would transport it across the tarmac. Mardi Lunn collected money to tip the baggage handlers. Donna Andrews and Bowen passed, collected and verified liability waivers that everyone was required to sign before boarding. While waiting to board, Shani Waugh and Jean Bartholomew found a football and played catch in the parking lot with colleagues. Koreans Mi-Hyun Kim, Jenny Park-Choi, Hee-Won Han and Jeong Jang huddled together around a GameBoy. Denise Killeen and Krystal Parker watched as their sons, Drew and Nicholas, scampered around as if they were in LPGA day care. Patricia Baxter-Johnson and Leigh Ann Mills walked their dogs. Most of the other players just sat on the tile floor and talked, happy just to be getting out of town. Just after 2:30 p.m. the flight crew asked us to line up single file for the walk to the plane. We heard normal airport-speak: stay together, have your IDs ready, dogs will be sniffing the carry-on luggage. The Planet Airways Boeing 727 was a short par-5 away, but there were no dogs, no officials and no one checked ID. Graham, the LPGA president, did clear every individual as s/he boarded. Still, not everyone was completely comfortable. Maggie Will had to be calmed during the flight by Andrews and one of the flight attendants. Will wanted to know where the pilots were from, where the crew had been and how long they had known each other. As the plane made the 10-minute taxi to the runway, the cabin was quiet with anticipation. If anyone needed a reminder of the current conditions, an Air Force cargo plane was in line behind the charter, which left many with an eerie feeling. The plane finally took off at 3:01 p.m. For the first hour in the air, the plane slowly filled with chatter, joking, card playing and, most important, a sense of relief. That all changed when the five-hour flight hit some turbulence. As the plane struggled, everything again went silent. Cards were put away and everyone hurried to their seats and found their seat belts. Pepper, looking very patriotic in her blue and white striped, long-sleeved button-down and a red Nike hat, swiftly secured her seat belt and buried her head in her hands, as did several others. Pepper isn't playing the Asahi Ryokuken, but she figured the charter would be a faster and safer way to get to her Jupiter, Fla., home. Now, as the plane seemingly bounced off the clouds, she didn't feel so safe. Pepper's husband, Ralph Scarinzi, tried to comfort her with some humor. "Maybe you should try a scotch," said Ralph, knowing that vodka, Dottie's drink of choice, was out of stock. From across the aisle, Michelle McGann, wearing a U.S. flag bandanna, called out to the distressed Pepper, whose head was bowed, "Hey, are you praying over there? Say one for me if you are." The pilot announced that we would be out of the bad weather in just a few minutes and it was smooth flying to Amarillo, Texas, where the plane refueled. Under normal circumstances the 727 would have been able to fly 170 passengers and their luggage straight to North Augusta. But this was no ordinary passenger list: With more than 70 sets of clubs and tour bags, the load was extremely heavy, necessitating the pit stop. The second leg of the flight proceeded without incident. Card games started back up, laptop computers illuminated the cabin with DVD features from Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me to Gladiator. And then there was dessert. The night before, partly to keep her mind off the recent tragedies and to spread some goodwill, McGann baked chocolate-chip cookies. She didn't just make a couple dozen; she made enough -- 17 dozen, to be exact -- for everybody on board. The tour's new Betty Crocker walked up and down the aisle like a well-trained flight attendant, offering the morsels. When the wheels first hit the runway at Augusta (Ga.) Regional Airport, there was a smattering of applause. A few minutes later, as the plane came to a stop, the pilot announced, "Welcome to Augusta, and we have got you here safely." The message brought a loud cheer and ovation. The organizers of the Augusta tournament were waiting on the runway. The dozen or so folks didn't seem to care that it was almost 1 a.m.; they were just happy to know that half of their field was safely in town. Since the rental-car desks had closed five hours earlier, they had arranged for three coach buses and several vans to transport players and caddies to their hotels. In the pitch dark, some 10 hours after arriving for the flight, everyone helped unload luggage from the hull of the plane. As suitcases and golf bags traveled down the conveyer belt, players looked at tags and called out the names of the owners. The caddies loaded countless bags into a van that was heading straight to the golf course, and the players scooted their overstuffed suitcases to the buses. By 2 a.m EST, 12 hours after starting the journey, almost every player was in the hotel. Only Pepper still had a journey ahead of her. "Only one more flight for me today," said Pepper as she headed to another part of the desolate airport. In the middle of the night, she was to return home on a private jet owned by a good friend. "We'll be home in just over an hour," said Scarinzi. "And home is a good place to be right now." Tom Hanson, a regular contributor to Sports Illustrated's Golf Plus section, is a longtime caddie on the LPGA Tour. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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