Cherry Hills Village – There is every chance that history will be made this week at the United States Women’s Open at Cherry Hills Country Club. The prevailing thought is that it will be provided by Annika Sorenstam, the most dominant player in women’s golf. A successful attempt to win a third consecutive major championship this season would leave the Swede one step removed from the Grand Slam of four major titles in the same year. That feat has never been accomplished by a professional golfer.
Then again, perhaps the record book will mark that the 2005 edition of the sport’s most prestigious women’s tournament was won by a 15-year-old amateur. Michelle Wie, soon to be a high school junior, only periodically drops in to professional play via sponsor’s exemptions. However, thanks to 300-yard drives and a savvy that belies her years, Wie nearly always excels. She finished second to Sorenstam two weeks ago in the season’s previous major, the McDonald’s LPGA Championship.
That finish illustrates the yin and yang of women’s professional golf today, what one regular tour observer calls “The Young and Restless versus The Old and the Bold.” It’s the emergence of a group of young stars making their mark in a sport heretofore dominated by veterans.
“The younger players are coming out with an attitude of having no fear, and then you have the sheer competitiveness of the older players,” said veteran LPGA player Lorie Kane. “But the common thread is golf – no matter what your age or your time out here on tour, that’s the bond – that we all have the passion for the game.”
Two of the past three Opens have been won by players in their 40s – Juli Inkster in 2002 and Meg Mallon last year. In between there was 26-year-old Hilary Lunke, who almost seems an afterthought amid such talents as Wie, 18-year-old Paula Creamer and last week’s Rochester LPGA International winner, Lorena Ochoa, only 23.
Inkster, already a member of the LPGA and World Golf Hall of Fame, has a daughter in high school. Creamer won her first professional event before her high school graduation.
The 34-year-old Sorenstam’s domination this season – winning in six of her eight starts – is unquestioned. However, the youth-versus-experience story line is certainly a delicious subplot, one that has visions of cash registers ringing for years to come in the heads of LPGA officials. Besides Creamer, Wie and Ochoa, there are Natalie Gulbis, 22, and Cristina Kim, 21. The player many consider the best American, Cristie Kerr, is only 27.
And the fact that there’s still an element of uncertainty about the outcome this week, that there is such depth of competition in the sport, has definitely been noticed.
“Paula was as well prepared coming out of high school at 18 as I was after four years playing for a great college team, if not better,” said Wendy Ward, 32, a tour winner this season who attended Arizona State. “We won three NCAA championships before I left, but I feel she’s better equipped to be out here than I was.
“I shake my head at it; it’s amazing – they’re just primed and ready to go. The younger players still admire the older players, but the older players get pushed. They’re going, ‘Now wait a minute, was I that good when I was 18?”‘
The standards and goals previously held by aspiring pros don’t apply to the new generation of players. Wie wants to become the first female to play in the Masters – and she would be if she were to win the U.S. Amateur Public Links championship next month. Already a veteran of two PGA Tour events, Wie will also play with the men in the John Deere Classic in two weeks. There is a chance that with a high enough finish, she would qualify for the British Open.
As if she doesn’t already hit the ball far enough, Wie said she wants to increase her distance another 10 to 20 yards before she goes up against the men again.
“I’m exercising two hours every day, and I think it’s paying off,” she said after the LPGA championship. “Those first 5 yards are easy to gain, but I want to be up there with the big dogs.”
Creamer’s goal entering the season was to make the U.S. Solheim Cup team for its biennial matches against a team of European professionals. The American squad has long been the province of older players, and Creamer’s quest was made even more daunting by the fact that she only had one year to acquire enough points to become one of the 10 automatic selections to the team. Other players have accumulated points since the start of the 2004 season.
However, Creamer currently stands in 14th place, and her performance of late, with first-, second- and third-place finishes in her past four events, would indicate she deserves to be one of U.S. captain Nancy Lopez’s two wild-card selections even if she doesn’t crack the top 10. Kerr leads the points standings, with Kim in sixth place, 24-year-old Dorothy Delasin in eighth and Gulbis in 10th.
Kerr is the only one of the quartet with Solheim Cup experience; the potential for so many new faces being present on the traditionally veteran team has reportedly led to Lopez being lobbied to use her captain’s picks on veterans. While the tableau has added to the weekly drama, Creamer just keeps rolling along.
“Everybody’s competing with everybody,” she said. “But that’s one of the beauties of competition – you have to learn to be friends with everybody off the golf course. When I’m out there, it’s just me and my caddie playing golf. But at the end of the day, it’s nice to know that there are other players who don’t care what happened.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
