After awhile, enough becomes enough.
In the past PGA Tour players have been known to get a little surly
when question after question asked of them centers on Tiger Woods.
In fact, just three years
ago at this week's Players Championship, Hal Sutton probably had
the best response in regards to all of the
Tiger talk, saying: "I will tell you this. By praising Tiger all the
time, I don't know what it is doing for Tiger, but it's certainly putting
a defeatist attitude in the guy that is doing all the praising all
the time."
The same kind of media persistence is starting to occur on the LPGA
Tour after Annika Sorenstam's wonderous 2002 campaign and her decision
to play the PGA Tour's Bank of America Colonial in May.
In commissioner Ty Votaw's state of the the Tour address on Wednesday,
Sorenstam was the third main point Votaw wanted to address.
"The thing I asked myself that I found interesting over the last
several months in reading what all of [the media has] written about
it is the debate and coverage has primarily been about how well will
she do at Colonial, as opposed to asking the question: How well does
she have to do on the LPGA Tour to get the kind of coverage that she
has gotten, just for her decision to play in a PGA Tour event?" Votaw
said.
"When I addressed the players
in Phoenix last Monday night, I showed the players a stack - a New
York telephone book-thick stack - of articles
written about this story, and those articles, along with her appearances
on The Today Show, her appearance that will happen on The Tonight Show,
the appearances that will happen on 60 Minutes and in Parade Magazine
and other media outlets between now and Colonial and the days and weeks
after Colonial, will only make the LPGA greater, become better-known
in the public's mind."
All very valid points, but at what point will the issue become old
with her fellow players. Casual Friday would love to see Sorenstam
top last year's results - and contend at Colonial - so don't go speed-dialing
Martha Burk, please.
But at Se Ri Pak's Kraft/Nabisco Championship pre-tournament press
conference, the second through seventh question asked of Pak was Sorenstam-related
- and there were only 15 asked. One of the great joys of the LPGA Tour
is the parity at the top combined with the fast-paced progress of its
younger players.
Sorenstam is without question great for the LPGA Tour, but Casual
Friday hopes that the increasing 24/7 Sorenstam does not impede the
continued growth of the LPGA Tour and women's golf.
DOUBLE CLICK
www.pgatour.com/mm/liveat17/index.html
How often have we, the Casual Friday duffer, stood over a shot into
an island green? Maybe not often, but we do wonder what it would be
like to play the 17 th at the TPC at Sawgrass Stadium Course. We all
can live vicariously through The Players Championship field thanks
to this Web site link. It's a great way to kill a Friday at work. Oops,
sorry, we're not supposed to suggest that.
