The Reality of Life on the LPGA Tour

Last week, I referred you to Shane Bacon over at Fanhouse Golf and Dogs That Chase Cars because he would be caddying for Erica Blasberg at the J Golf Phoenix LPGA International.  Having caddied for Christina Kim in a pro-am in the past, I knew Shane would have an even better time having done it in the real tournament.  His final round recap is particularly revealing.  Not really revealing so much as a caddy, but from what he learned from Erica about life on the tour.

This particular section was particularly eye-opening:

It was at that moment that I realized something. I live in an objectionable situation with the golf world. It is easy to knock Wie or Anthony Kim or Ryo Ishikawa. The bottom line is Michelle is 19. She is 19 and has the LPGA firmly on her back. This is a tour that is quietly dying. On 16 in the final round, Erica told me of another tournament that was lost this year because a sponsor pulled out. The ladies are playing all the tournaments because they don't know how much longer they will be around.

I'm trying to figure out which tournament is going by the wayside, or if it is one that we already know.  As I find out more, I'll share.  I kind of disagree with Shane's assessment that the LPGA Tour is a dying enterprise, but I do tend to agree that the LPGA Tour's current strategy is not serving its fans and players very well for the long haul.

Shane's last observation was kind of the Zen moment for him, but really should be remembered.

Maybe I learned a simple thing this week that I haven't ever grasped -- they might be professionals, but they are just normal people doing a trade they were gifted enough to do. Being hard on them for no reason is ridiculous. It's golf. Birdies, bogeys, pars and handshakes. Hopefully the knowledge I gained this week will remain with me as I spend the next few months writing about this lovely game.

I certainly feel pretty gifted to be able to play and write about golf.  On the grand scale, not many people can do that.  Despite these ladies being able to play for a million plus each week, they still struggle with a lot of different sets of problems.  That's actually true for almost any professional golfer.  They may not have the same kinds of problems that you and I face each day, but they do have problems.

In my experience in hosting The 19th Hole and LPGA on GNN, I have been able to talk to some of these players as guests.  To a person, they have always been pleasant to me.  It may be a product of a fairly small sample size, but I don't think that is the case. 

In my interviews with them, I always try to talk to them like a normal person would rather than like a journalist would in the press tent.  I kind of go off on conversational tangents and am really not trying to get a quote from them.  It's a 30 minute show; I need more than that.  Many times, the pro tells me at the end that it was a lot of fun to talk to me because it is a break from the grind.  They can actually act like a person who just happens to be in the top 0.0001% of golfers in the world instead of a professional golfer.

Like I said, pro golfers are playing golf for millions of dollars.  But the most interesting thing to me about these talented people is how they really are much more like you and I than you may guess.  It is because they are treated so differently by fans, media, and their circles that they sometimes try to remove themselves from it.