Rosie Jones has the same efficient golf swing. She's still kind of thin. Nothing has changed with the LPGA standout's hairdo, golf equipment or affable personality at this week's Kraft Nabisco Championship.
But there is something different about Rosie. It's the logo on her shirt and hat. Jones has new endorsement deal with Olivia, a global travel agency whose clientele is almost exclusively lesbians.
"Inherent in this sponsorship is my coming out," Jones wrote in the New York Times. "It's been a curiosity, but I've never really been in the closet.
"For more than 25 years, I have been very comfortable with the fact that I am gay. I came out to my family when I was 19. My friends and associates on the tour were all aware."
Never has a company with a customer roll so overwhelmingly gay signed to sponsor an athlete. Today, it's a unique move but could Olivia's deal with Jones mushroom into a significant force?
If more and more players, in golf and other sports, become open about their homosexuality, the comfort zone will expand for athletes and, I presume, with major businesses.
There has forever been a reluctance among image-conscious product makers regarding tie-ins with sports headliners who were even rumored to not be straight.
Tennis never had a more dynamic rivalry than Martina Navratilova-Chris Evert. Chrissie was terrific, but Martina was better. Evert was America's darling. Companies were eager to be associated.
Navratilova? All but snubbed.
She had a more muscular look. Evert's appearance was more sellable. Sadly, that is far more of a factor with female athletes than men. But who doesn't know the biggest reason the Czech-born lefty was not hot stuff for billboards or TV ads?
Navratilova is a lesbian. This is one of the more intelligent, intellectual, take-everything-in athletes I have ever known. That didn't matter much in the commercial endorsement game.
Eventually, the nine-time Wimbledon champ went public with her lifestyle. For every endorsement dollar Martina made Chrissie grossed a thousand.
Changes are coming fast in pro sports, but you wonder, how long before an openly gay athlete is hired to plug a commodity not aimed primarily at homosexuals?
All this puts an old sports columnist's mind into a different gear. I don't know how many LPGA lesbians there are, or how many lesbians play tennis at the highest levels, or how many are involved in Olympics or softball or basketball or other sports. Probably dozens. Maybe hundreds. But the educational process is finally running at a higher speed.
Another bothersome thing ... why is it that almost every time "athlete" and "gay" are linked in public or media chatter, it almost always involves women? What about the guys?
Greg Louganis isn't the only one.
Who would be so blind, boneheaded or fossilized as to suggest there are few if any homosexuals among 1,700 NFL players, 400 in the NBA, 750 or so on MLB rosters or more than 700 ruffians in the NHL?
What about PGA Tour fellows or tennis pros? When might a fullback or goalie or catcher or point guard appear as an endorser of a major gay business? As is happening with Jones.
Move on, my friends. These are not your grandmother's professional sports.
'ROIDS REACTIONS: On baseball's record-breaking but now scandalized physiques, Manny Davis, 55-year fan of the Cardinals who retired from St. Louis to Clearwater, e-mails that he is "angry and frustrated over home-run numbers that now seem semi-bogus. I now plan to follow my Redbirds with much less passion.
"I sniffle, having gone to Busch Stadium to witness many of Mark McGwire's heroics, having learned he was probably artificially pumped. That is so unfair to the old Ruths, Marises, Aarons as well as the history and sport of baseball.
"You're right, Hubert, if they don't use Congress, that arrogant players' union and all major-league resources to make every fans know the game is again pure, well, I might stop watching at all."
THE LAST WORD: It's astonishing how Arnold Palmer perseveres as a commercial endorser. Still hot at 74. You see the ads. So who'll be the next senior jock to sell with multimillion-dollar thunder well into Medicare?
Got to be George Foreman, 55, the old heavyweight and Olympic boxing king who rakes in escalating fortunes pitching mufflers, grills and his clothing line for us huskies at Casual Male Big & Tall.
