Annika Sorenstam had a great start to the season with her 70th win at Turtle Bay. She hung in there to take 4th place at the Fields Open, 4 shots behind winner Paula Creamer.
Then Lorena Ochoa began her 2008 season with an authoritative “Not so fast, Annika” performance in stormy Singapore at the HSBC Women’s Champions. Oh, Annika secured a solo second place, but at 11 strokes behind Lorena’s -20, it seemed more like second fiddle. It’s just one tournament and I would love to see some closer races and some more Annika wins, but for now it sure seems like Annika : Lorena :: Phil : Tiger.
However, Annika set the standard for excellence in women’s golf. And while Lorena might notch some wins in individual tournaments near the end of Annika’s career, she’s going to need an awfully long ball retriever to vault the pole set so high by Sorenstam herself. For all we know, she may not have plans for a lengthy enough career to get there. Either way, this should be a year of great golf on the LPGA Tour.
Which brings me to my Gripe of the Post (I seem to be having a GOP quite frequently these days, no?):
After a full week and not catching any of the early telecasts, I was so looking forward to settling down to bloop through at least a couple hours of coverage for the final round on my DVR. I had been tracking the scores so I already knew it was a blowout, so I summarily deleted the early rounds from my playlist and eagerly started up Sunday’s final. What a mess. First, there was only an hour of coverage. An HOUR! Woohoo… we got to see the leaders play a few holes and we saw the groups ahead of them play a few shots while the leaders waited to play. With slow play and rain delays, it was an 8+ hour round of golf! That’s all they could bring us? Then there was the cheesy music as they transitioned to and from advertisements. With all that waiting around time, couldn’t The Golf Channel have assembled a better program to intersperse with the “live” play? Nope.
Plus, I don’t know how much to blame on the weather, but I’ve seen much better pictures from other poor-weather events. We were treated to a gray, misty, blurry picture with terrible sound, dull color, and lackluster commentary. Is that any way to encourage viewership? It certainly didn’t do justice to the field of vibrant, colorful, youthful players, who were effectively washed out.
The ladies are giving us great golf and I want better coverage of it. And I would think the LPGA would want better, not to mention the sponsors.
Golly, the GOP became longer than the actual topic. I shall look inward.
March 4, 2008 at 12:44 pm
It seems to me that the Golf Channel was broadcasting the HSBC with a WebCam. It really is disappointing how little effort GC put into broadcasting the HSBC. I hope this is not an indication of how they are going to continue to push the LPGA events to be nothing but ‘Sound Bites’ backed up with sound tracks from the Howdy Doodie Show.
March 14, 2008 at 5:30 am
Grab a stopwatch and run it every time Tiger is in a commercial, promo or mentioned in the telecast on “Tiger Golf Channel.” It just might be a longer clock time than the LPGA’s entire play broadcast…
March 23, 2008 at 4:28 am
Perhaps not quite yet. Annika is too good a player to let Lorena Ochoa run away with the Queen of the tour award and she will fight every bit of the way to dethrone Ochoa and reclaim her spot at the top of Women’s golf. There is no way that she can be called “ Lorena’s Mickelson”. Phil just does not have the consistency to challenge Woods on a regular basis. Just looking back at his recent performances, he seems to be missing the cut more often than he should be, nearly once every five tournaments. While he has racked up a few wins in that period, he needs to be there near the top of the leaderboard even if he is not winning those tournaments. That’s what Tiger does. Of course he has lost that habit of late because he only wins tournaments. Tiger in his last 30 tournaments has only been outside the top 25 once and out of the top ten some five times. I would not be surprised if someone from the chasing pack overhauls Phil sooner than he thinks. Even though there are some very talented players on the LPGA tour, it is really Annika who has “been there done that” who has a real shot at challenging Lorena’s dominance on tour.
Although one thing I just noticed, Lorena is further ahead than Annika than Annika is ahead of any other player on the LPGA tour. The Tiger-Lorena analogy is definitely on, not so sure about the Annika-Phil bit though.