Nancy Lopez Returning to LPGA Tour

by Mulligan Stu on Mar 7, 2007 11:46 AM EST Comment 0 comments

nancy lopez On a limited basis, at least:

Lopez said she plans to play five or six LPGA Tour events this year, starting with the $2.6 million Ginn Open in Reunion, Fla., April 12-15.

She's played in only 11 tour events since 2002, and she hasn't had a top-10 finish since 1997.

"I know I have to get in real good shape to try to compete with the young girls, but I think I still have the mental capacity to go out there and play good golf," Lopez said Tuesday at a news conference before a University of Nebraska at Omaha women's athletics fundraiser. "Let's just see if I can make it in the hole a little faster than I have the last few years."

Lopez spent the past couple years working to improve her fitness and has lost more than 30 pounds.

Can she do it? Can Nancy Lopez return to the LPGA at age 50 and crack the Top 10? Well, she's only three years older than Juli Inkster, and Juli's a threat every week. On the other hand, Inkster also hasn't been away from the tour for a long time.

Lopez's career is a very interesting one. She likely deserved to be called one of the Top 5 female golfers of all-time - although she's probably stuck at No. 5. She won 48 times in her LPGA Tour career, despite missing significant chunks of playing time three different times before and after the births of her daughters.

Without those absences, Lopez almost certainly would have reached 60 career wins. And she was, without question, the dominant player of her time - a time that also included the likes of Betsy King, Beth Daniel, Pat Bradley, Amy Alcott, Patty Sheehan, and Inkster. Lopez was the best.

And yet ... she won only three majors. In some ways, Lopez is the Billy Casper of women's golf. Casper won 51 times, yet only three majors. But Casper has an out: he was playing in the era of Palmer, Nicklaus, Player and Trevino, and Capser ranks behind those guys.

Lopez ranks ahead of her peers, yet most of the ones listed above won more majors than her. It's hard to explain how such a dominant player can win only three majors when she's winning everything else.

That's the one thing in her resume that keeps Nancy Lopez from being part of the argument over who is the best of all-time.