Veteran Golf Pro Remains Peppered With Opinions

Hey, so some Europeans got mad.

Dottie Pepper said before this year’s Solheim Cup, the women’s golf version of the Ryder Cup, that European Solheim players “would be bagging groceries” if it weren’t for the LPGA. In other words, and maybe some other words would have been better, European golfers are darn lucky that there is an LPGA Tour that offers more prize money than any other alternative.

Yikes.

One year for the Solheim, Pepper dyed her hair red. Another time, Pepper was so flagrantly patriotic, so wildly exuberant, so frustratingly good that some of the Europeans such as Annika Sorenstam and Laura Davies, put Pepper’s name and crudely-drawn likeness on a punching bag and whaled away.

That’s the way Pepper is. If Pepper has a thought, an opinion, an idea, an emotion, she speaks it or shows it or expresses it.

For this Pepper usually gets criticized. She should be praised.

If anyone paid attention to women’s professional golf, they would learn about people like Dottie Pepper.

Pepper, who with partner Juli Inkster is at Pelican Hill Golf Club in Newport Coast defending the duo’s title at the Hyundai Team Matches, has four holes pierced in each ear. She is 35 with the spirit of a 15-year-old and the confidence to speak her mind and then stick by what she says.

“You don’t hear me retracting statements I made,” Pepper says. “What I said about bagging groceries, of course it was exaggeration but the point was correct. If it weren’t for the LPGA, the Europeans wouldn’t be making a living playing golf.”

Pepper loves making a living playing golf. She learned the game from her grandmother, a feisty, outspoken woman who took her 7-year-old granddaughter to a course in upstate New York and made her take lessons.

“She wouldn’t let me on the course for three months,” Pepper says. “That’s a long time when you’re 7 years old. She made me go to the driving range and the putting green. I had to learn the game before I got on the course. But I loved it. So did my grandmother. She was ahead of her time I think. She died in 1992, right before I started having real success on the Tour. I wish she could have seen me.”

Pepper has 17 Tour victories, including two majors--the Nabisco Championship in 1992 and 1999. But it is Pepper’s rambunctious behavior in Solheim Cup events that has earned her a reputation as a bad sport and an ugly American.

“I don’t understand that,” Pepper says. “I get excited and emotional. I don’t think there’s anything cooler than playing for your country. Showing a little emotion isn’t a bad thing. If I make people mad, I guess that’s their problem.”

Pepper began making her Solheim reputation in 1992. When her European opponent, Dale Reid, rolled a long putt to within two inches of the cup, Pepper conceded the hole. But instead of gently tossing Reid the golf ball as is customary in this sport of grace, Pepper whipped a fast ball, served up a purpose pitch.

Two years later, with her hair dyed red, Pepper squealed loudly and happily when Davies missed a putt. Horrors, the Europeans said. Bad form, bad manners, bad sportsmanship. So offended was another opponent, Catrin Nilsmark, that Nilsmark described Pepper as “nothing I would ever want to be.” Apparently that would include being a winner. Pepper has a 13-5-2 record, the best among Americans.

“I always have said that if you can’t get excited about playing for your country, then when can you get excited?” Pepper said. “It’s just the way I am. There’s nothing hidden.

“It’s the way I was brought up. Everybody in our family spoke our mind. If we had an opinion on anything, we expressed it.”

Pepper’s family also skied. Pepper skied until she was 15 and broke a wrist.

“I realized that what happened in skiing affected my golf so I gave up skiing,” Pepper says.

Pepper is a gifted athlete who is strong and quick. She has the athlete’s walk. She has been a furious workout fanatic too, until this summer when, for the first time in her career, Pepper found her body failing her.

Midway through the U.S. Open, Pepper had to withdraw because of a back strain. She sat out nine weeks and began, she says, “to suddenly feel old.”

Old in the back maybe. After rehabilitation and the realization that she might have to rethink her schedule, avoid too many long plane flights and work out more intelligently, Pepper came back to finish second and first in her last two starts.

She and Inkster defeated Grace Park and Kelli Kuehne 4 and 3 Saturday in the semifinals. Today Pepper and Inkster will play Sweden’s Sorenstam and Canadian Lorie Kane in the finals.

Time to feel patriotic again?

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.