REUNION, Fla. – Lorena Ochoa said Wednesday at the Ginn Open that she would never consider playing in a PGA Tour event.
Even if I happen to stumble this weekend upon a ballroom full of dollars and pesos somewhere around this large Reunion Resort, I’m not buying it.
Forgive me if I’m not in a believing mood.
Last week, Travis Ford, the men’s basketball coach for the last three years at my alma mater, UMass, turned down jobs at LSU and Providence before saying, “This is the right place for me. ... I’m 100 percent committed to this. ... I wanted to be able to, when I talked to (my players), give them the final: This is what I’m doing, this is it.”
He accepted the head coaching job at Oklahoma State yesterday.
But don’t take that bitterness as likening Ochoa to Ford, who is now being referred to in at least one circle of friends as “Travis Fraud.”
I think the world of Ochoa, who opened the Ginn Open Thursday with a 4-under 68, and I’m one of millions. The 26-year-old from Mexico may come off unfavorably to everyone else on LPGA leaderboards, but we all know she will also go down in history as one of golf’s great humanitarians, perhaps the nicest, most authentic superstar the game will ever see.
During her pre-tournament press conference Wednesday afternoon, a reporter in Springfield, Ill., asked by phone if she was planning to play later this summer in that city’s State Farm Classic.
Ochoa squirmed a bit in her seat, gritted her teeth and grinned. She didn’t want to break this bad news, the smallest of blips on golf’s newsreel:
“No, I’m sorry.. I played that tournament a few years before, and I do like to go there,” she said. “It’s just that the schedule right now is not the best... So I’m sorry, and hopefully I can make it, if not this year then next year.”
She shrugged her shoulders, smiled again and waited for her few remaining questions, the last of which went something like this:
“Would you ever consider playing in a PGA Tour event?”
Ochoa immediately responded “No.”
“My idea was first to play on the LPGA and dominate here and just try to do my best and achieve my goals,” said Ochoa, who has won four of five events to begin this season, including her second consecutive major championship. “I’ve had a few offers to play, especially in Mexico, in the PGA Tour event that goes to Mayakoba. But right now I have no intentions to do that.
“I think it’s completely different. I think there are other things that I could do to improve my game or to have an experience, maybe an exhibition, but not to play on the PGA (Tour).”
Larson Segerdahl, tournament director of the two-year-old Mayakoba Classic, which has been played opposite the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship during that time, said he has been trying to convince Ochoa to play in the event “literally, since the day the event was born.”
Some people would call this a no-brainer.
Ochoa has been the No. 1 player in the world for almost a year now. Her last four victories have come by a combined 34 shots. Three of those fields were top-notch. Her last victory, which qualifed her for the LPGA and World Golf Halls of Fame, came at the Corona Championship at home in Mexico, where she was greeted by at least one sign featuring a “Superman” logo and the words “Super Lorena.”
When asked Wednesday what she thought about the possibility of golf being added to the Olympics, she perked up. “It would be something very special,” Ochoa said.
She is also averaging just under 280 yards off the tee this year, which would rank her 111th in the PGA Tour’s driving distance category, above such names as Jim Furyk, Woody Austin and Justin Rose. This isn’t exactly a disadvantage on Mayakoba’s 6,900-yard layout at El Camaleon Golf Club, where Brian Gay (173rd in driving distance) and Fred Funk (198th) are past champions.
And her last four victories have come by a combined 34 shots.
Did I mention that?
“She is the Michael Jordan of Mexico,” said Segerdahl, which is another thing we can add to the list. Ochoa said Wednesday that she doesn’t have a lot of trouble going out to dinner in America. “In Mexico,” she said, “it’s impossible.”
Actually, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem should think twice about keeping Ochoa’s invitation open, or maybe think about bringing a World Golf Championship to Mexico. The Accenture Match Play’s viewership has a tendency to nosedive after Wednesday’s first round, and an early Tiger Woods upset would probably point all remotes south of the border.
“I would say we would probably steal some headlines from Tuscon,” Segerdahl said.
I have a difficult time believing Ochoa, won’t eventually make her way to Mayakoba. Segerdahl said “there’s really never been a maybe” from Ochoa, but the tournament continues to keep contact with Ochoa’s team, and every year donates money to the Lorena Ochoa foundation.
“We’re trying to make the connection, and trying to at least develop that connection further,” said Segerdahl.
There would be pressure on Ochoa certainly, considering the Mexican media is only beginning to appreciate just how difficult it is to win on the LPGA, nevermind make a cut on the PGA Tour. But there would also be education, which is a central part of Ochoa’s mission.
There would also be celebration.
“From our standpoint, it would be a great benefit to the tournament and to the local community just to help emphasize just how good this game is,” Segerdahl said. “... It will garner us some more attention, but it will also in the minds of a lot of this local community that doesn’t necessarily understand golf, it will help to justify what we’re doing down here.
“Because they don’t know anything about golf, but they sure as heck know who Lorena Ochoa is.”
Such are the things Ochoa will think about. Such are the reasons she will play.
Although she seemed grounded in her position Wednesday, two years ago her answer was more open-ended.
“I might consider playing in a PGA Tour event someday, but I first want to accomplish my goals in the women’s events,” Ochoa said in an interview with ESPN.com in December 2006. “Maybe one day in the future I would participate in a PGA event in Mexico, to help the sport become more popular and improve my own game. I’ll never say no, but right now I am not ready to play with the men.”
Some of her words Wednesday were also a bit curious, especially these: “But right now I have no intentions to do that.” That’s the only time I’ve thought Ochoa sounded like a college coach on the way out.
Annika Sorenstam, the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event at Colonial in 2003, said this week that “it just needs to be done in the right way. Lorena is very dominant and I have no idea what her plans are, but I think if it’s done the right way it can be really good.”
Paula Creamer said she would never even think about it: “Granted that if you’re the No. 1 player in the world, obviously you’re better than everybody and if that player wants to challenge themselves more, I guess that’s their decision, however it wouldn’t be my decision.”
But then came this: “Who knows? Maybe 10 years down the road, maybe, but not right now.”
Cristie Kerr said she was offered a sponsor invitation to a PGA Tour event sometime after Sorenstam’s adventure, but declined because she wouldn’t have had enough time to prepare and “pump some serious iron.” But given the right circumstances, she’d go for it.
“If I did it, I would do it to raise a half a million dollars for breast cancer,” Kerr said. “I would expect nothing of myself as far as making the cut. But I would do it to help the tour gain visbility, just show them how much heart we have and it would really help open people’s eyes I think.”
Ochoa will end up playing for similar reasons. She will play for Mexico. She will play for women’s golf.
She will play for golf.
And she will play to win.
“You know what, I think she’d make the cut,” Kerr said. “I think she would make the frickin’ cut.”
That I believe.
Posted: 4/17/2008
print
email
discuss
