Stacy Lewis’s 2-hole surge that took her to victory and Inbee Park’s disappointing finish at the Women’s British Open are now part of golfing history, and the promise of more great golf and keen-edged competition at the Solheim Cup is a week in the future. This is an ideal time to pause and reflect.
Jun. 7, 2012; Pittsford, NY, USA; Stacy Lewis hits from the tee during the first round of the Wegmans LPGA championship at the Locust Hill Country Club. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Hoffman-USA TODAY Sports
Leading up to the Women’s British Open the pro golf spotlight focused squarely on Inbee Park. The 25-year old South Korean was making her run for a 4th major tournament win in a single year, the mythical and elusive Grand Slam. Bobby Jones couldn’t do it, nor could Ben Hogan, Babe Zaharias, Arnold Palmer, or Tiger Woods. They’d all come close, and they’d all failed. Now it was Park’s turn, and there was every reason to think she’d pull it off. But she didn’t. In fact, Inbee Park went into the clubhouse at St Andrews after the final round of the 72-hole tournament 6 shots over par and tied for 42nd place.
Inbee Park was drawn to a career in professional golf by one of those rare moments when a newly created national icon. Korea embraced and rejoiced in Se Ri Pak’s 1998 victory at the US Women’s Open, and a generation of young Korean girls picked up their sticks and followed Pak.
After years of mind-numbing hours on the driving range and the practice green, living the life of a golf nomad, traipsing from one tournament to the next, systematically refining and perfecting her game, the superb athlete Inbee Park had become crashed through the wall this year. Tournament after tournament, she sent drive after drive straight down the fairway. Her balls were drawn to the green by an invisible force as powerful as gravity itself. She wielded her putter like a maestro conducting Handel. For 16 consecutive weeks she was (and still is) ranked the #1 golfer on the pro tours.
Then Inbee Park teed off at the Old Course, the odds on favorite to win the Women’s British Open and her 4th major tournament in a single year.
Inbee Park’s performance at the Women’s British Open was an amazing and profoundly sad display of hubris.
How did Park prepare for those 72 holes of golf that promised her an indelible spot in golf history? She spent the week before the Open in Korea, meeting with her sponsors and making public appearances. She enjoyed being recognized everywhere she went. Nothing wrong with that. She’s worked long and hard for her celebrity. She’s earned by honest, hard labor an incredible amount of money and recognition. She’s achieved the status of cultural icon.
But others were playing practice rounds and planning game strategies based on a variety of hypothetical wind conditions in their preparation for playing 4 rounds of golf on one of the most challenging courses in the world, while Inbee Park was half a world away meeting with her sponsors and making public appearances.
What happened? Did Inbee Park, who talked softly and modestly about the “great honor” she felt being given the “opportunity” to attempt a 4th major tournament win, begin to believe what the bloggers and columnists and sports reporters were writing and the commentators were saying?
July hadn’t been a good month for Inbee Park. She’d finished at the Manulife Financial in a tie for 14th place and then dropped further down the board to a 33rd place finish at the Marathon Classic. How could she have ignored the warning signals? Her game was deteriorating. Her ball was increasingly having trouble finding the cup. Yet, through that increasingly troublesome month, the public hype continued.
While it’s tempting to conclude that Inbee Park began to believe her own press, there’s another side to the hubris of her performance at the British Open. What about those other players who were grinding out their practice rounds, developing their strategies for making putts on devilish greens, working to best prepare themselves for the unpredictable Scottish winds? They, too, have spent hour after hour on driving ranges and practice greens, lived the same nomadic life of the touring golf pro, made the same personal sacrifices in pursuit of excellence.
Where were the bloggers and commentators and columnists and sports reporters while those other world-class golfers were working their way toward qualifying for and then preparing for the British Open?
Let’s face facts. One doesn’t qualify to play in the Women’s British Open, or the US Women’s Open, or any other pro golf tournament, without preparation, training, and world-class athletic skill. The women who teed off last Thursday at the Old Course were peers. What message did the sports press send to the pro golf community over the past month? If you’re not on the verge of setting or breaking a record, you aren’t going to get noticed?
Is it good for the game of golf, or for any other sport, to put the focus on the superstars?
Writing in Golf Illustrated in December 1921, Dorothy Campbell Hurd warned of the dangers of focusing exclusively on one “super-golfer.” While commenting on the public obsession with English golfer Cecil Leitch, who appeared invincible when she arrived in the US to play in the 1921 amateur championship, Hurd’s observations have a remarkably contemporary ring: “This robs golf of a certain picturesque element . . . It must be remembered that it is not for the best interests of the game that one player should be considered in a class by herself.”
The hubris of the Grand Slam belongs as much to the sports press as it does to Inbee Park. With the Solheim Cup right around the corner, we all have an opportunity to get our focus off individual personalities and back on the game.