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The LPGA Comes to Town
Observations from The Kathy Ireland
Championship Honoring Harvey Penick,
Onion Creek Club, April 26-29, 2001.
Korean Mi Yun Kim stands barely taller than her staff bag (5' 1," actually). She hits the snot out of the ball nonetheless, and is quite straight with a swing that travels further over the back and down the left shoulder than John Daly's. John, however, does not carry an 11-wood.
After she lost the tournament, it is not a stretch to say by one revolution of the golf ball, I asked if she might take away some positive from the experience. She finished second after all and got some more playoff experience. (Several weeks earlier, she also lost in a playoff to Annika Sorenstam.) "Kimmy," as the other players call her, does not speak English. She and her translator discussed the question at some length. Then Mi Yun Kim smiled weakly. Out came the succinct translation: "Winning is better."
American Rosie Jones addresses every shot on the toe of the golf club. This helps prevent 'coming over the top.' Instructor Bryan Gathright recalls that Harvey Penick recommended shorter players address the ball this way, towards the toe. Bryan adds that with oversized drivers doing so keeps the ball from creeping closer to the heel with ruinous results.
Rosie is not a long hitter but she rarely misses a fairway. She also putts with her right index finger down the shaft of her putter, something common enough among the plebian classes but rarely if ever seen in better players.
Every golfer has faults and tendencies that are their own. Once an instructor was asked how long the student might benefit from continuing to practice what was being suggested. "For the rest of your life," he said.
So I asked Se Ri Pak what were her keys, what she works on every time she practices. There are two, she said. She reminds herself, first, to accelerate through the ball, to "make sure I don't get lazy through impact," and, secondly, to "keep it as wide as you can on the backswing."
Se Ri has an obvious and impressive athletic carriage. She works out daily. Golfer might not be first guess. Her shoulders remind one of an Olympic swimmer of Eastern European origin. She smiles easily, now. Memories of spending nights in cemeteries are far removed. During a congenial pre-tournament press conference, she mentioned an affinity for "just doing something at home for myself," playing video games (including golf games) and watching Tom and Jerry cartoons. "I know I need time for myself. My time is my time."
The more I watched the parade of players, the more noticeable their subtleties and mannerisms became. A finger placed just so, a club deliberately positioned here, the unique waggle and facial expressions, their dress, how they moved through, acknowledged or avoided the public, and so on. And then there was the football. On the range I spied a golfer hitting full wedges with a Nerf football bandaged to her right thigh. No telling.
Like most professional athletes, the LPGA players showed exceptional powers of observation. They don't miss much. I don't mean to be unkind but there might be a bonus pool for handing out autographed balls to little girls. I actually saw a pony-tailed reed of a young thing jump up and down when Dottie Pepper took an allotted 2.4 seconds en route to the tee to make someone's day.
The golfers' distinctive habits were very much in evidence in the pre-shot routines of two players I never tire of watching.
Dottie Pepper has a marvelous golf swing and an unmistakable game face. She can be heard audibly from a distance of easily 50 yards. "Down! Down! Down! Down!" I heard her shout after a wedge. At the time she was several shots off the lead and making a determined charge through a very tough stretch of holes early in her round on Sunday.
Her pre-shot routine has a bit of toreador in it, a blend of equal parts intensity, intimidation and machismo. She starts four paces behind the ball with her left foot posed slightly and a tad dramatically in front. Then the club is pointed with a direct but decided flourish down the fairway, presumably at the target, waist high. All that's missing is the staccato blast of trumpets. Dottie casually drops her hands holding the club in her left. She approaches the ball from the left side at a brisk but unrushed clip. One, two, three, four steps. She assumes her stance. For the briefest moment the club is brought down from above the head in the fashion of the old 'snake killer' batting stance employed by Gerry Priddy in which the bat is held high above the head almost "pointing back on a horizontal plane" (Arthur Mann, How to Play Winning Baseball, 1953). The club is then placed behind the ball from above, in a slow Samurai-like simulation. It's as if she were about to slowly slice into a watermelon. Then she swings. This is repeated for every shot she hits.
Laura Davies has not been playing particularly well this year but she remains one of the LPGA's biggest and deserving stars. A large woman, she has an easy-going, near Ruthian mien to go along with her instantly recognizable physique and prowess. Her calves could belong to a cyclist. Someone told me she often hits a driver "because she can't," meaning that even though she shouldn't use it because of the potential risks, she does it anyway. Her length, it seems, has almost become a burden on the short courses her tour plays. I couldn't help but think of Betsy Rawls' comments that the courses the LPGA played in bygone days were considerably longer, that it wasn't unusual to hit four- and even three-woods into par fours.
Laura too has a very distinctive pre-shot routine. What it says about her personality, I could not say, but I did get the opportunity to talk briefly with her about it. For those who have not seen her play, Laura does not use a tee. She takes an iron, usually a wedge, gouges out a spliff of turf, returns the wedge to her caddie in exchange for whatever club she selects for the drive. The gouge provides her with a ready-made edge on which she places the ball to her liking. This is great fun to watch but it's just the appetizer.
Laura addresses the ball from a short but appreciable distance. Where Dottie starts from behind, Laura starts from alongside. She then advances on the ball with a methodical, almost machine like cadence. It's as if she were on an assembly line or operating like a stiff mechanical wind-up toy. She steps closer, short waggle, steps closer, club getting closer to the ball, short waggle, until the club eventually reaches the ball and it's sent on its way. Interesting that neither Dottie nor Laura takes a practice swing.
Laura told me that she has no idea where this most individual mannerism, what she calls a "little extra bit of room," came from but she's done it since she was a girl. I asked what it does for her.
"I don't know, really," she said. "It's just something . . .All pre-shot routines just happen naturally. You don't know it's a pre-shot routine until you get into it. I just stand behind the ball and move in. The club face is away from the ball and then just before I take it away, the club face goes back in behind the ball whereas with most players the club is right in there behind the ball from address. It's just something I've developed over the years. It wasn't conscious. Why I do it? I have no idea.
"I've always done it. I've just always made that little extra bit of room. I suppose it was because I was always trying to hit it very hard. I started playing long drive contests with my brother for 10 pence. You have to hit hard so maybe I gave myself a bit more room and that's where it came from."
One thinks of the general homogenization, a sameness that pervades the game. This can be intentional, as in the course conditions on the PGA Tour which so irk Mr. Hoch. We're increasingly told that we must ride, cart paths only. On many courses the variety of shots by design is dwindling. Less is left to chance from this uniformity.
Yet despite these intentional broadsides, and even our own instinctive quest for efficiency, these individual mannerisms, even ticks, sprout like dandelions through the concrete. It works for Dottie. It works for Laura. Her elastic swing works for Mi Yun Kim as the swings of Jim Furyk and Arnold Palmer work for them. Why do we think they'll work for us?
We all do it slightly differently, from walking and brushing our teeth to swinging a club. Few games accept such eccentricity as does golf. Although we direct much of our attention at suppressing it, such diversity is yet another reason to be thankful.
Harvey Penick knew that a waggle couldn't be grooved. All this means is that mimicking Tiger amounts to a further advantage for Tiger. Are the others best served by, oh dear, following his path? I wouldn't think so. Relax. Have another Coors Light. Find your game.
Precision in golf may rely ultimately on the establishment of a repeatable routine. Many think so. Perhaps it's encapsulated in Laura Davies' assembly line warm-up.
Discovering, honing that essential piece of timing may prove as difficult as digging out the swing from the dirt. And it must be done, as Laura suggests, without a thought. What fun. Golf asks us to predict the future and then unconsciously make it happen.
We should be glad. This instinctive routine is one less thing to think about. Isn't that nice? One less piece of clutter. -0-
2001 PGA Merchandise Show
The 2000 Open at St. Andrews
Southern Pines, North Carolina
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