Updated at 4:27 p.m., Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Talent on LPGA Tour runs deep as ever
By Steve Dimeglio
USA Today
"Anybody who doesn't get involved in the LPGA is, well, I'll use the word, nuts," she says. "The LPGA has so much talent and so many role models for our children today. And the thing is these players are going to be around for a long time. So many of them are babies."
Lopez isn't trying to pull the headcover over anyone's eyes. Her enthusiasm is as genuine as it's ever been since she won nine times during her rookie season in 1978. And her gusto is matched throughout the LPGA tour, which tees off its new season Thursday at the SBS Open at Turtle Bay.
It's the first of at least 35 tournaments totaling nearly $55 million in prize money, including 10 tournaments with purses of at least $2 million. Those fiscal benchmarks are records for the LPGA.
The schedule also includes the 10th staging of the Solheim Cup, which the United States will defend against their European counterparts in Halmstad, Sweden.
Another highlight on the schedule also takes place over the pond when the LPGA tour travels to the birthplace of golf - the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland - for the Weetabix Women's British Open.
And the ADT Championship, which will again reward the winner the largest check in LPGA history - $1 million - ends the season.
But at the heart of the LPGA's zeal will be seen every week on the pairing sheets. Although the biggest names will continue to get top billing and contend throughout the year - No. 1 player in the world Annika Sorenstam, reigning player of the year Lorena Ochoa and seven-time major winner Karrie Webb leading the way - the LPGA tour isn't short on supporting stars primed to amplify the top tier.
"There's no question this is the deepest pool of talent ever on the LPGA tour," says Dottie Pepper, lead analyst for most of The Golf Channel's LPGA tour broadcasts and a former star who racked up 17 wins and two majors. "The best years that I played, some of the top 30 that advanced to the season's culminating event really didn't have a great chance to win. Now you can take it down to 30 that have a legitimate chance to win every week.
"There are established stars who can still win and younger players pushing them. I think one would be hard pressed to find a better scenario."
LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens says scene setters to back up Pepper's claim can be found most every week.
"In the last few years, what you are seeing is that at any given tournament, on a Sunday morning, there are between eight and 12 women separated by two or three strokes," she says. "I don't know how the LPGA, from a depth-of-field standpoint, can be any better than it is right now."
Last year 18 players won tournaments, including six who won multiple times — Sorenstam, Ochoa, Webb, Cristie Kerr, Hee-Won Han and Mi Hyun Kim. Not among all the winners, however, were top talents Natalie Gulbis, Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel and Ai Miyazato. Add Michelle Wie, too.
"It was surprising for none of them to have won, but it does show that there is a very deep pool of talent on the LPGA," says Webb, who won five tour events last year and started 2007 with consecutive wins in the Australian Open and ANZ Ladies Masters in her homeland. "It is not getting any easier. I feel like I have to work harder and harder each year to be able to stay close to the top of the game."
The genesis of the LPGA's growing collection of talent is twofold: worldwide expansion of the game, and Sorenstam, who, around the turn of the millennium, added advanced training to that incorporated concentrated attention to fitness, nutrition, instruction and new technology.
"It gets tougher every year to win," Gulbis says. "We get the best players in the world, and every single player wants to get on our tour. The competition makes you want to work harder and harder. You have to work hard if you're going to win."
Juli Inkster, whose victory in the 2006 Safeway International was her 31st, has put in the hours on and off the course to keep up with her younger colleagues.
"Annika raised the bar, and it made all of us better," says Inkster, who won her first tournament 23 years ago and turns 47 in June. "We're diversified, with a lot of nationalities and personalities. We're all pushing each other - the young are pushing the old, the old pushing the young."
Kerr, who won three times and shot the lowest round on tour in 2006 (a 10-under 61 at the John Q. Hammons Hotel Classic), is as excited about the new year as any she's ever approached. She even secured living quarters a short walk from the Old Course for the Women's British Open months ago.
"You can see it in the players, how jazzed up they are to play and how competitive it is out here," she says. "You have to stay sharper to stay one step ahead of the competition."
Ochoa, who made huge strides last year in winning six tournaments, knows a repeat of 2006 isn't going to be easy.
"It's such a big challenge, but this year should be fun," she says. "I have to be prepared and always respect all of the players. I have high goals and I've been training hard. I can't wait to start playing."
