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May 25, 2008
The LPGA Triumverate
Lorena Ochoa won the
Sybase Classic in New Jersey for the third consecutive year on Sunday. It is
her sixth win of the season. Before that, Annika Sorenstam had won two of her
last three starts including a seven shot thrashing at the Michelob Ultra Open at
Kingsmill. In between the Sorenstam victories, Paula Creamer won her second
event of the season – with Lorena Ochoa in the field – at the SemGroup
Championship in Oklahoma. Before all of that, Ochoa reeled off four consecutive
victories.
On the season, only one
person other than these three players has won an event on the LPGA Tour. That
person is Louise Friberg and she won in Mexico at the Mastercard Classic. Other
than that, no LPGA player has won. A limited few have sniffed victory. Juli
Inkster lost in a playoff in Oklahoma for the second consecutive year, but this
time went down to Creamer instead of Mi Hyun Kim.
The domination of three
players over this tour is staggering. It is something that is reminiscent of
the Big Three of Nicklaus, Palmer, and Player in their run of trading major
championships – particularly the Masters – over a nine year period. The fact
that it is happening in a single season is equally as impressive as that feat.
Venues change from week to week, so do the players, as do the playing
conditions. Despite all of that, Ochoa, Sorenstam, and Creamer still seem to
find a way to win between the three of them.
Even when the three of
them are not winning, they are still playing excellent golf. Creamer is the
lagger of the three. In her nine starts this season, she has two wins and two
other top 3s. The rest of the finishes are outside of the top 10. Again, that
makes her the worst performing player of the three. That would be a career
season for 90% of golfers on any professional tour.
Sorenstam has just two
finishes out of the top 10 and three out of the top five, including a T11 this
weekend in New Jersey. Ochoa has finished outside of the top 10 only once this
season - at Kingsmill. She is winning at a 67% rate, a stunning and unheard of
rate, even if down from the 80% winning percentage she had earlier in the
season.
The interesting part
about the dominance of these three players is that it can be spun into a
negative thing.
Barker Davis of the
Washington Times wrote a piece on April 25 in which he claimed, “[T]he fact that
two players have dominated the LPGA to such a degree almost concurrently says
nearly as much about the lack of depth in the women's game as it does about
their individual greatness.”
On the Golf
Channel’s Golf Central program last night, the topic of conversation switched to
the same subject matter. Brandel Chamblee disagreed with Davis’ premise that
this is a potentially bad thing. He claimed that sponsors love superstars, not
parity. (That is not universally true. See the NFL for details.) In golf,
that is true. The PGA Tour really only has two or three superstars and sponsors
fawn over them.
The LPGA Tour
may be able to experience the same kind of rub from the Big Three. That makes
this year particularly critical for Commissioner Carolyn Bivens on multiple
fronts. The Tour needs to close the deal on a television contract that is as
beneficial as possible in 2008. Also, the Tour needs to sure up events that may
be losing sponsorship or ending altogether – particularly the Ginn events and
the event at Superstition Mountain.
With Annika’s
announcement of stepping away from the game at the end of the season, the LPGA
Tour will be hard pressed to be in a better position to negotiate with all
parties come 2009. Yes, Ochoa leads a pack of next generation players and she
seems poised to become one of the all-time greats. But, the position of
strength for the Tour today is that there are two all-timers in the midst of an
amazing season with another potential great joining in on the fun.
The fact that
more writers appear to be covering the LPGA Tour in Tiger’s absence is telling.
Quite possibly, the LPGA Tour has never enjoyed a window this large through
which the game can grow. It must take advantage of this situation.
Ryan Ballengee is the operator of The Golf News Network and host
of The 19th Hole Golf Show and LPGA on GNN.
Having graduated from the University of Maryland
in 2004 and 2006, Ballengee brings the perspective of the younger golf fan to
the microphone and his columns. Over the nearly five years he has been
broadcasting and writing, Ballengee has developed a reputation for a unique
interviewing style that asks both the difficult and fun questions. He
can be reached at
ryan@thegolfnewsnet.com.
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