Stephenson was way out of bounds
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By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
So, when did Jan Stephenson turn into Hootie Johnson and Rush Limbaugh?
Tell us, please, that when she plunged her FootJoys to tonsil depth with the recent intolerant comments attributed to her in an upcoming issue of Golf Magazine, somebody who is normally one of the brightest, most articulate figures in women's golf wasn't speaking from the heart.
Stephenson, who is here for a series of events, including the Turtle Bay Championship, told the magazine, according to excerpts posted by USA Today and ESPN.com:
- " If I were commissioner (of the LPGA), I would have a quota on international players and that would include a quota on Asian players."
- "Sixty percent of the Tour should be American, 40 percent international."
- "Asians are killing our (LPGA) Tour" with "their lack of emotion" and "refusal to speak English when they can speak English."
Even for someone who has been over-the-top in public before, these statements eventually brought an apology Saturday. Stephenson's prominence only serves to make her ill-conceived comments all the more insidious. They are given a weight and circulation they do not deserve by her three decades on the LPGA Tour.
You'd think that the 51-year-old Australian, who has felt the backlash and observed enough of the old boys club's influence on golf wouldn't now be fostering an old girls club, too.
Associated Press
Maybe there is a bit of frustration in there, too, considering she's finished in the Top 50 of the LPGA money list only once in the past seven years, a period during which Asian golfers in general and Koreans in particular have become fixtures on the leaderboard.
LPGA veteran Jan Stephenson said, "Asians are killing (the LPGA) Tour" with "their lack of emotion."
If she truly wants what is best for the LPGA Tour — and she was honored as among its "100 heroes" during the 1988 centennial of golf — then she should want the best players there, be they from America, Australia, Asia or the Berber tribes.
Only by attracting and showcasing the best players in world will the LPGA thrive. And golf is growing by leaps and bounds internationally, its popularity spread in part by players like Se Ri Pak, who began the Korean boom.
Now, four of the top six players on the LPGA money list are from Asia: Pak, Grace Park and Hee-Won Han, who were born in South Korea, and Candie Kung from Taiwan, half of whom went to U.S. colleges.
LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw has credited the growing international face of the sport for raising attendance, TV viewership, Web site traffic and purses, hardly the ruination of the circuit.
Does the LPGA need to do more to make its up-and-coming players more public relations and marketing savvy? Of course, and it behooves the LPGA to undertake clinics to educate its emerging players in the ways of the marketplace.
But the racial quotas and insensitive finger-pointing Stephenson proposes aren't the answer. And, neither is the kind of short-sighted exclusionary thinking that kept blacks off the PGA Tour until 1961.
As Stephenson's comments wrongly brand a whole new generation of golfers in one wide swipe, they also do a disservice to a woman who should be remembered for what she has brought to the tour, not what her intolerant message would take away.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
