Klein Will Go for the Green : NCAA Champion to Leave Arizona State, Turn Pro

Alas, despite a list of amateur credentials as lengthy as her 48-inch driver, Emilee Klein has some holes in her game.

Sure, she rarely misses a fairway and is so fearless on the greens she can stare a six-foot knee-knocker into the hole. But later this year, Klein plans to make the quantum leap from college and amateur golf into the professional ranks, and she has some fundamental deficiencies to master first. After all, there are things that all successful players on the LPGA Tour must execute.

For instance, every pro player worth a salt knows that after winning a big tournament and a staggering paycheck, there are a couple of celebratory options. For instance, a winner usually chucks the golf ball into the gallery.

“I can’t throw,” Klein said. “(The ball) goes straight down into the ground in front of me.”

Like most of her putts. The other option is jumping into a nearby water hazard and swimming a lap or two.

“I guess I could fall into a lake OK,” she said with a laugh.

Last week, it was time for Klein to sink or swim in the Women’s NCAA Division I Championship at the Oregon Golf Club in West Linn, Ore. The wind was blowing and it rained during much of the final round.

It wasn’t as easy as falling out of a boat, but the Notre Dame High graduate rallied from a slow start in the final round to win the individual championship and lead Arizona State to a runaway victory in the team competition.

Although she is only a sophomore, it was her final collegiate round. Moments after she clinched the title on No. 18, she was cornered by a television crew and asked what she would remember most about the afternoon.

“It’s the last tournament I’ll ever have to carry my own bag,” she cracked.

Must have been pretty heavy, what with all of those championship trophies she bagged over the years.

After a summer filled with appearances in prestigious national amateur events and a couple of LPGA Tour stops, Klein will attempt to earn her tour card at qualifying school in the fall. If she follows her lifelong pattern, Q-school will be a formality. In fact, the queue may form behind Klein, who turns 20 Saturday.

“I truly believe she’s ready,” Arizona State Coach Linda Vollstedt said. “She plays within herself. She knows what her strengths are.

“That’s very unusual for someone as young as she is.”

For Klein, turning pro is the culmination of a logical progression that started when, as a 14-year-old freshman at Notre Dame, she became the youngest player to win the Women’s California Amateur.

The target area quickly grew larger, her game more focused. In 1991, Klein won the U.S. Junior Girls’ Championship and was named the Rolex national girls’ junior player of the year.

She won the first tournament she entered as a collegian in 1993, finished 15th in her first NCAA championship tournament and won the whole ball of whacks last week.

Winning the NCAA title made for a perfect ending of another chapter for Klein, a former so-so journalism student at Notre Dame who said she can’t remember “if any of my stories were ever published.”

Now stories are written about her.

“I couldn’t have asked for anything better,” Klein said of her final college event. “I couldn’t have written it better.”

Reading and writing won’t count for much on the pro tour, where ‘rithmetic on the score card means everything.

Despite using a driver that is 4 1/2 inches longer than the norm for a men’s club, Klein’s drives this season found the fairway an almost incomprehensible 92% of the time.

That was best in the nation, Vollstedt said. By any standard, a 48-inch driver--particularly one fitted with a stiff shaft--is a telephone pole. For Klein, who stands all of 5-foot-4, it’s a redwood tree.

Nonetheless, she never hits one into the forest. Klein missed one fairway during the entire NCAA championship. She three-putted twice in 72 holes. She hit 16 greens in regulation in each of the first three rounds.

Understatement underscored: “Consistency is probably the strongest part of my game,” Klein said.

Next month, Klein will be part of the American team that will face a squad of Europeans in Chattanooga, Tenn., during the Curtis Cup. The Curtis is the women’s version of the Walker Cup. Both are biennial events that rate as the Ryder Cup for amateurs.

This was all part of the Klein master plan--sort of.

“We really wanted her to stay in school for four years,” said Klein’s mother, Randee. “The LPGA Tour will always be there. But Emilee didn’t really like going to class.”

College golf was merely the means to an end for Klein.

“It was just too hard to juggle everything,” she said. “My sorority stuff, school, golf. . . . (Golf) is what I’ve always wanted to do. School just wasn’t a priority.”

Klein is the first to admit that playing--and looking--her best definitely is.

Those who know her had a hard time recognizing her during the televised final round of the NCAA Championships.

She takes great pride in her personal appearance, routinely wearing “lipstick, earrings, hair bows,” and coordinated outfits during competition.

The weather, abysmal in the final round, made this nearly impossible.

Form and function became blurred. In her college swan song, Klein was forced to wear oversized rain gear that left her looking like the ugly duckling.

“I make a definite effort to look my best,” she said. “But I was just trying to get through the round.”

The NCAA forbade players from wearing apparel with visible corporate logos, so Vollstedt was forced to place a piece of athletic tape over the insignia on Klein’s cap. Vollstedt scribbled “ASU” on the tape.

Tres chic . Even worse, while Klein was standing on the practice range with her arms crossed before the final round, her photo was snapped.

Klein was yawning. She looked half-interested. Wouldn’t you know it, the photo appeared a few days later in a national sports magazine.

“Aw, why would they do something like that?” Klein’s mother groused. “She always looks so nice.”

Nice? In some ways, the civility of the college game will all but disappear when Klein bangs heads with the professionals. There will be no teammates, no support crew.

Klein has played in LPGA events before--she was low amateur at the Dinah Shore last spring--and feels the next competitive plateau will bring out her best.

“Playing with them made me raise my game to that level,” she said. “I feel I’ll get even better if I play against them all the time.”

Playing at Arizona State didn’t exactly quash her development.

The Sun Devils won the team title last week for the second consecutive year, only the third time in NCAA women’s golf that a team successfully defended its title.

Some called Arizona State, which landed three players on the Division I All-American team, the best women’s squad in college history.

Second to Klein in the NCAA individual race last week was teammate Wendy Ward, who also will play on the Curtis Cup team.

Despite playing the first four holes of the final round at four-over par, Klein managed to hold Ward at bay with a one-over-par 74.

Nobody was particularly shocked that it was an Arizona State runaway in the team and individual races.

“Some called it a college Dream Team,” Vollstedt said. “I’m really glad we won, because if if we didn’t, nobody would have remembered how good we were. Now we’ll be recognized.”

Klein, whose teammates waged daily war among themselves just to hold a spot in the starting five, said the accolades were accurate and then some.

It’s hard to argue: Arizona State won the team championship by 16 shots over USC.

“We were the best,” Klein said.

“I don’t know if a team will ever be as good as we were. I know that sounds cocky, but we were really, really good. Unless some team played out of its mind, there’s no way we were getting beat.”

The tournament beat goes on for Klein. Armed with sponsor exemptions, she is entered this week in an LPGA event in Minnesota and will play in another in July.

She also earned an exemption into the U.S. Open and will play in the U.S. Amateur.

Qualifying school begins in late August. Beyond that, Klein will learn what the term money player really means.

“It’s never going to stop being fun,” she said. “Sure, there’s money. But if you play for fun, because you love it, the money should take care of itself.”