The Best Player in Golf Prefers Babies to Birdies

The world’s greatest golfer is not necessarily named Jack or Greg or Severiano or Bernhard, or even Gary or Fuzzy or Lee.

The world’s greatest golfer can’t hit the tee shot 280 yards on the fly, will never get invited to the Masters, smoke a cigar, win the Hope, answer to a nickname like the Golden Bear or the Shark, or become a portrait on the wall at St. Andrews.

You think the greatest Hispanic player in the game is Seve Ballesteros? Lee Trevino? Chi Chi Rodriguez? Don’t bet a lot.

Look at it this way: Exclusive of Jack Nicklaus, the active PGA golfer with the most lifetime wins is Tom Watson, right? At age 38, he has 32. Lee Trevino has 27.

This golfer has 37. At age 31.

It has been almost 40 years since anyone on the PGA Tour has won 9 or more tournaments. It has been 14 since Johnny Miller won 8 in a year. This golfer won 17 in 2 years as recently as a decade ago.

You could rest your case right there for Nancy Lopez. Nancy Lopez has probably had 2,000 birdies. But what sets her apart is, she has had two babies.

You think Tom Watson would have won 32 tournaments if he had to play pregnant part of the time?

You think any male player could come back from maternity leave and shoot 64s? As a matter of fact, the question doesn’t have to be limited to male players. There are 11 members of the Ladies Pro Golfers Assn. Hall of Fame. Only one of them had time for a family. Lopez. Golf is a demanding master, a jealous mistress. It demands all your attention.

Whenever a male star’s game begins to slip, the media conclusion is that his off-course activities have begun to chip away at his concentration. You can’t have two careers if one of them is championship golf.

It is considered fatal even when the second career is golf-related. Let Jack Nicklaus miss a cut and the insiders whisper: “Well, he’s spending too much time on golf course architecture.” Let a Masters winner or a British Open winner sign for a series of corporate outings or barnstorm exhibitions and the expectation is, he will not be a contender until he has time to work his game back in shape again. Very often, he never will. See Bill Rogers.

What about motherhood as a distraction? What about marriage, homemaking, 2 o’clock feedings, colic, pediatricians? How do you win 20 tournaments, how do you make the Hall of Fame, become a legend before your time, so to speak, in the face of those demands on your time?

How do you go out and shoot in the 60s when you’re married to a ballplayer and he is traded from New York to Baltimore to Detroit and you have to make a new home in each? When you don’t know whether you’ll be in spring training in Lauderdale or Lakeland? Or Florida or Arizona, if it comes to that?

Nancy Lopez has had to cope with all of the above and still become one of the greatest, if not the greatest in the world at what she does.

It’s not uncommon in show business, of which golf is a part, for a star to be married to a man who serves as her agent, business manager, secretary, producer or mentor, generally. Lopez has been married twice, both times to men who had careers of their own. Her first mate was a television broadcaster, her present one, Ray Knight, is a major league third baseman. Neither one could reasonably be expected to open her mail, or even open her car door, pay the bills or bring her breakfast in bed. Nancy, the evidence shows, is often a housewife first, a golfer second. It’s for sure, she’s a mother first.

What would you think would be her greatest career ambition? She has never won the U.S. Women’s Open, the only “major” to have eluded her. You might think it would be high on her priority list.

It isn’t even on it. Nancy Lopez’s idea of a “major” is to have a son. She totally ignored birdies and bogeys in the press tent at the Nabisco Dinah Shore major down here the other day to talk animatedly of her longing, not for a U.S. Open, but a U.S. boy. Her two daughters are 4 and 1 1/2, but Nancy is not picking up. Nancy is looking forward to taking another sabbatical to round out her family. The gap in her life is not another golf tournament, it’s another child. Other players on the tour might want to know how to make eagles. Nancy says she wants to make boys.

Meanwhile, back on the course, Nancy is in her usual between-pregnancies mode--winning golf tournaments. The season is only five tournaments old and Nancy has already won one, the Mazda tournament at Boca Raton, Fla., pretty impressive for a player whose real interest is not in a green but a nursery.

It is common practice in women’s golf to identify a big hitter and habitual leader on the tour as “Big Momma.” For Mother Lopez, 5 feet 5 inches, 130 pounds, it’s inappropriate. “Super Mom,” however, is not. It’s right on the green, stiff to the pin.