Role Model

The treasured present of Nancy Lopez and the breathtaking future of Se Ri Pak had just come off the Wykagyl course after the first round of the JAL Big Apple Classic Thursday when a South Korean correspondent expressed the question for a whole new world of golf. “Do you think,” he asked Lopez with all due respect, “she can compare to you?”

Lopez, the graceful lady at 41, said in all courtesy: “She represents our tour well. She’s a great player already. But it’s kinda early to ask that.”

This is a champion’s way of saying beware; it’s a long road. “There are days when I go into my study and just cry--for what reason, I don’t know,” Lopez said. “It just seems I need to go in there and cry. ‘Cause you need to be alone and just rest. I told her to just leave because people love her already and are going to be there in her face all the time.”

Pak is 20 years old, a rookie scorching the fairways and fixing the gaze of a country that has no past in golf and sees her as an open-door policy to the future. Unlike Japan, which has been hot for golf for 50 years, the game is new in South Korea. Pak’s recent run is directly responsible for this tournament being televised live back home in the middle of the night.

Lopez likes her for professional and personal reasons. Lopez loves the idea of somebody drawing attention to women’s golf, especially somebody who tries to carry herself the way Lopez has. There are always nice people and always good golfers; when one player is both, Lopez applauds. After all, Pak said simply, “I want to be like Nancy Lopez in everything.”

The tournament directors made a prime-time threesome of Lopez, a Hall of Fame player who was Rookie of the Year in 1978 when she won a tour record five in a row; Pak, who has won three times this season, including the U.S. Open and the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic (with a record 10-under 61) in the last two weeks, and Hiromi Kobayashi of Japan, who won here in 1993 and has close ties to the Japan Air Lines sponsor. They went out together again Friday, and Pak and Lopez played their practice round together Tuesday.

In their way, Lopez and Pak together is like Arnold Palmer meeting young Jack Nicklaus. Lopez said she felt motivated by Pak. “She gives you momentum in your swing,” Lopez said. “Her swing is so good, you want to watch her instead of turning your head.”

More than one of the media outlets covering this tournament are from Asia, some leaving assignments at the UN. The gallery for the threesome, the only real gallery here for the first round, was very much Asian. “She’s top player,” Pak said of Lopez in brave English. “She had many gallery today. They had to see me.”

They have an interesting relationship. “After three daughters, I have this motherly instinct,” Lopez said. “I feel almost like protecting her, although I don’t feel I have a right to do that.” She can tell Pak how it was when she won nine tournaments her first year, of her Mexican-American heritage and of essentially bringing golf to people who had no golf.

Pak is the biggest sports figure in Korea. “By far, even though golf is just beginning there,” said her business manager, Yeong S. Shin, who walked the round with Se Ri’s father. “She is bigger than Chan Ho Park, the Los Angeles pitcher.

“She is the best export item of Korea in the last 50 years. Hyundai has the big name but doesn’t make money. What you call her bottom line is bigger.” Neither Japan nor Korea welcome women in business; they do accept female athletes.

Thursday, the gallery crossed the barriers of history. “In long history, there is big animosity between Japan and Korea,” Shin said. “In athletics, we support each other; this is the future of Asians entering the world of sports.”

At the moment, the company Samsung is Pak’s benefactor, having sponsored her golf education at South Florida. “An investment,” Shin corrected. “She is the best what you call ‘moving venture capital.’ ”

Lopez’ 3-under-par 68 left her four strokes behind the leader, Penny Hammel. Pak shot 72, Kobayashi 74. “I drive OK; my irons OK, putting OK,” Pak said. “I have not that much luck.” Every course she plays is new to her. Virtually every playing partner is new--except for Lopez, who was the role model for years. Lopez is the most charismatic of golfers, a person who has tried to balance the demands of excellence with marriage to Ray Knight, a hero of the 1986 champion Mets, three daughters and a sense of who she would like to be. When she goes home, she puts the clubs away. “Normal to me,” she said, “is not playing golf.

“Se Ri is composed. At (that age) others thought I was composed; I didn’t think I was composed at all. If she doesn’t hit it right at the flag, even if it’s a good shot, she’s not satisfied; that’s good.”

But there’s the dark side of what Lopez called “the pressure to be the superstar. Se Ri is 20 and her life is going to pass quickly the next few years. . . . Looking back, there’s going to be two or three years where she says, ‘I don’t remember being 21 or 22.’ ”

Lopez felt obliged to represent the LPGA Tour, gracefully dealing with incessant demands for autographs, pictures and interviews. “As soon as I got inside the ropes, I felt free,” she said. “It was my favorite place to be.”

Pak will face the demands of a country. When Pak won the Open, Lopez saw her weep and read that it was the first time she had cried. “She’s been reared where they don’t show emotion,” Lopez said.

She would tell Pak to save a piece of herself for herself. But then when Lopez played a recent tournament in New Jersey, she made time to play miniature golf with recovering stroke victims on the Ocean City boardwalk.

“I care about my tour and my golf,” Lopez said. “I care about winning. I care about my family. I care about how I handle myself in public. That’s pressure all the time.

“Some athletes don’t do that; they don’t care. They’ll play their profession and play it great, but once they step off the course, they’re not nice; they don’t sign autographs. They don’t carry what they have on the golf course or the basketball court or wherever with them. They basically just walk away from everything that involves them.

“I think Se Ri’s going to have pressure. It comes because you care about what you’re doing and the way you handle yourself.”

Pak’s advantage is that she has a good role model.