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Florida is losing grip on LPGA

By BOB HARIG

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 28, 2001

Florida is home to the LPGA Tour but perhaps not to any of its tournaments.

The LPGA, which has its headquarters in Daytona Beach, typically opens its season with a swing of events through the Sunshine State in January. This year's tournaments were in Orlando, Naples and Miami.

But sponsorship woes mean the start of the 2002 season likely will bypass Florida, leaving just the season-ending LPGA Tour Championship for the top 30 money winners in West Palm Beach.

If any of the events are to be salvaged, commissioner Ty Votaw is recommending they be played at a different time of year. Not that this is a bad thing for the tour. Votaw would like fewer, but stronger, tournaments.

"Having the golf season start so soon after the previous year's schedule ends is something we've been looking at for a while," Votaw said Wednesday from the LPGA Tour stop in Northfield, N.J. "Certain players took the month of January off anyway. If we can contract the sport -- other sports have looked at it, like baseball -- maybe less is more. But we want to do it through attrition."

Where Florida is concerned, the tour is having the work done for it. The event played at Grand Cypress in Orlando is unlikely to return without a corporate sponsor. Office Depot, which sponsored the event at Doral, has put its money behind a tournament in Los Angeles.

And with the likelihood that those events won't be on the schedule next year, tournament organizers in Naples decided to take a year off, waiting for a new course to be completed and not wanting to be the only Florida tournament.

"Florida is somewhat a victim of the individual circumstances of each event," Votaw said. "Also, it's part of our strategy to make our schedule a little tighter and a little more attractive, so the events in the dog days of summer don't get weak fields. Long term, we want to be in Florida. But does it have to be in January?"

Votaw said any Florida events likely would be scheduled for the spring as part of a Southeastern swing. The Tour Championship will be played for two years at Trump International. This year's tournament is Nov. 15-18.

SENIOR MAJOR: When Tom Kite tied for fifth at the U.S. Open, it was the best finish by a player 50 or older since Sam Snead tied for third in 1974 at age 62. Kite shot a final-round 64, one off the major championship record. But he heads into this weekend's U.S. Senior Open at Salem (Mass.) Country Club without a victory this year on the Senior PGA Tour.

How could Kite beat all but five of the best players in the world, yet be unable to notch a senior victory?

"There's a lot of talent out here (on the senior tour), and it's a matter of being able to show off our skills," Kite said. "If you play courses with no rough and with the pins in the middle of the greens, it doesn't allow you to show off your skills. When pins are tucked behind bunkers and you go for a pin and hit in the bunker, you have the opportunity to show your skill playing that shot."

In other words, Kite's skills don't come out on the relatively easier senior layouts like they do at a place such as Southern Hills. "There was added incentive because I was representing the senior tour," Kite said. "I've taken pride in playing the hard courses well."

LIGHTNING SURVIVOR: The "Lightning Strikes Again" lines were in vogue when Retief Goosen was a surprise contender and winner of the U.S. Open. But Goosen's brush with nature was certainly no laughing matter. He was fortunate to survive it.

As a 17-year-old in his native South Africa, Goosen was struck by lightning while on a golf course and had to spend several weeks in the hospital.

"Retief was lying naked and unconscious on the fairway," Goosen's mother, Annetjie Goosen, told the Cape Times of South Africa. "His clothes were burnt off his body, and he didn't even have shoes on. He suffered burns and a burst eardrum. Luckily, there were two doctors on the course who stabilized him before he was rushed to the hospital."

Goosen's mother believes Retief's personality changed after the incident. "He emerged from the hospital a much humbler and quieter person," she said.

TIGER TAMED: It's been more than two years since Tiger Woods had back-to-back tournaments as poor as the U.S. Open (tie, 12th) and Buick Classic (tie, 16th). The last time Woods finished out of the top 10 in consecutive events was during a four-tournament stretch starting at Bay Hill in 1999.

- Information from other news organizations was used in this report.

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