She's Just Not an Open Person

By JIM HODGES

July 10, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NORTH PLAINS, Ore. —

It was a year ago, and Annika Sorenstam had just laid waste to the field at Pine Needles when the question was asked for the first time:

Can you become the first to win three U.S. Women’s Opens in a row?

“Let me enjoy this one for a while,” she pleaded. “I’ll think about that when the time comes.”

It’s time.

When she steps onto the first tee today at the Witch Hollow course at Pumpkin Ridge, she has a date with golf destiny, though frankly she would just as soon that destiny stand her up. Let her win her third consecutive Open, let her be the only woman to do it, but let her do it quietly, then let her slip back to Lake Tahoe with the satisfaction that comes from victory, but without having to haul women’s golf back with her.

Carrying an entire game for an entire gender is a heavy burden for a 26-year-old. Let someone else bear it.

Tiger Woods? Who wants to be the women’s Tiger Woods?

A lot of people want Sorenstam to, because the women’s game has tried everything from slogans to cheesecake with only limited success, and it sees what Woods is doing for men’s golf and wants some of that: steak with sizzle.

Sure, Woods rubs off on all golf, but women want their hero, and they figure their game needs one.

The steak is there. The best female golfer? It’s Sorenstam, with the steel-blue eyes and attractive looks that some still believe can help sell their game.

But wait a minute. The eyes are hidden under a pulled-downvisor that says this is all business. “I’m such a competitor,” she says. “If we play cards, chess, tennis, you name it, I want to win.”

Sizzling’s not her style.

The game, sure. Sorenstam’s game is there aplenty, honed in her native Sweden under a demanding system that says, basically, there are 18 birdies on a course for the taking.

And there’s personality plus, but it’s contained in a way that allows her to sign autographs without looking the recipient in the eye.

Fist-pumping, arm-waving, daddy-hugging, photo-mugging, attitude-showing--that’s not her. She couldn’t do it if she wanted to, and she doesn’t want to. She’d rather kiss the trophy, pocket the check and head home with husband David, there to commune with a personal computer and--truly--bake cookies until her next tournament.

On the course, she’s called the “quiet assassin.” The LPGA Tour and women’s golf in general would prefer she were a bit more noisy.

She can’t be.

“Well, no, I don’t really come out trying to be, you know, the person that, you know, I don’t try to go out and be in the spotlight,” she says, haltingly, in lilting English that is at once charming and, for an instant, breaches the wall built around her.

“I’ve never been a very open person,” she says. “I’ve always been a little shy, and I don’t really go and look for the limelight. So I don’t know if that’s the player you’re looking for.

“Probably not, but I can only be myself and do what I like to do, which is play golf. I like to help in as many ways as I can, but sometimes it’s not easy for me to open up and say, ‘This is me, and this is what I can do.’

“I like my game to speak for itself. That’s kind of what I’m--what I’m good at is to play golf, you know.”

She’s definitely good at that, and those connected with women’s golf can recite how good as quickly as they can get a tee in the ground.

In 13 tournaments this year, she has four wins, nine top-three finishes and is first on the money list at $781,463. She has 10 wins over the past 2 1/2 years.

“The way she’s playing, if I finished one shot ahead of Annika this week, I’m going to consider it a good week, probably be holding that trophy,” says Laura Davies. “If she plays well, you’ve got to do something special to beat her.”

Nobody has in the last two Opens:

* In 1995, at the Broadmoor, Sorenstam was five shots off the lead in the final round, playing for second, but so, as it turned out, was everybody else. It was Sorenstam’s first LPGA victory--the tour embraces USGA events as its own--and she enjoyed it so much she was ill for four days. That allowed her to blow off the David Letterman show, something she really didn’t want anyway.

“I don’t know what I’ve got myself into,” she said as she was leaving the Broadmoor.

* Last year at Pine Needles, she was in charge from her second-round 67 on and won by six shots. It made her the sixth woman to win successive U.S. Opens, the first Mickey Wright (1958-59), the most recent Betsy King (1989-90).

Now there is a chance for three, and even the players who badly want to stop her acknowledge that the game can profit from her success.

So does the USGA.

“I don’t know what it will do to women’s purses, but I think it would do an enormous amount in the field of women’s athletics, in boosting sponsorships,” says Judy Bell, the USGA president.

“I think any time we can develop a star, we move up a notch.”

Well, yes, but that’s the USGA’s problem and the LPGA’s problem, not Sorenstam’s. Neither is women’s golf thrusting Karrie Webb into the scenario as a rival--the men had it with Arnie and Jack, why not Annika and Karrie?--a real concern . . . yet. The two will play together today with Emilee Klein, but Sorenstam’s problem is not Webb or Klein.

And it’s not leading female golfers to a new level.

“I think winning for the third time would obviously inspire women to play golf . . . but most of all I do this for myself,” she says. “I hope that if I do win, that it will give women’s golf a big kind of kick . . . but I can’t control that part of the game. And I can just control me and what I want and my goals.”

If the women’s game wants to come along for the ride, well, that’s OK too.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

U.S. Women’s Open

* WHEN: Today through Sunday.

* SITE: Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, North Plains, Ore.

* PURSE: $1.3 million

* TV: ESPN (Today-Friday, 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.) and NBC (Saturday 1 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m.)

Easy as One, Two . . .

Five previous winners of successive U.S. Women’s Opens and how they did in tries for No. 3:

* Mickey Wright (won 1958-59) 71-71-75-82--299 5th

* Donna Caponi (1969-70) 70-75-77-77--299 Tie 3

* Susie Maxwell Berning (1972-73) 73-77-75-76--301 11th