LPGA’s Must-See TV: Sex in City (of Tarzana)

I was trying to have a civil conversation with the wife about the lack of babes on the LPGA Tour, and the tour’s attempts to introduce sex to their dull game, and I swear, I hadn’t mentioned the lack of jiggle on the links--yet--and she just snapped.

“This is all about Cro-Magnon man having his tongue out,” she said.

Now I’ve been to a few LPGA tournaments in my day and I can tell you there are women out there who look as if they’d be delighted to remove the tongue from some men, but I don’t think the wife was talking about the LPGA galleries.

“From what you’re telling me, the LPGA is just trying to make men drool,” she said. “Sex belongs in the bedroom, or somewhere in the house.”

I probably shouldn’t have stopped the car and made such a big deal about putting that idea of “somewhere in the house” in writing, because suddenly the conversation shifted to “some time in your lifetime.”

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A DAY later when the wife was speaking to me again, I was just kidding when I said the LPGA ought to stop all this nonsense about getting attention and just announce that Annika Sorenstam will be teeing off topless today at 8:05 a.m.

“No one would forget to turn the clock ahead an hour,” I said, and I was just trying to lighten the mood, but this whole LPGA business of adding sex appeal to the game had the wife mocking me--as if I’d watch women’s golf just because Lisa Guerrero was lining up a putt.

“What’s wrong with being just a pretty woman?” the wife said.

“I loved Julia Roberts in ‘Pretty Woman,’” I said. “She made a very appealing hooker. In fact, I would think if they had a Hooker’s Tour the galleries would be huge.”

For some reason the wife was getting the idea this emphasis on sex was being done just to attract the male audience. But I think it’s pretty well accepted in golfing circles the LPGA appeals in a large part to fans of Rosie O’Donnell, and putting Rosie in a tank top and short shorts probably isn’t going to do it for most men.

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JUST IN case I had it wrong, I went to the El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana on Saturday to check out the LPGA tournament. It’s a good thing, too, because ESPN2 cut away from televising the event with tournament leader Se Ri Pak putting on No. 18 and 69 other golfers on the course to show the Women’s Fitness America Pageant. You’ve got to give the people what they want.

I’m not sure, but on one of those days when his arthritis isn’t acting up, I think Dwyre could beat most of these women, so the golf is pretty much unwatchable.

But that’s all right, I was here to see just how far the LPGA was willing to go when it came to sex. When I checked into the media room, someone immediately took me to the side and pointed to the scoreboard. “Just like in the PGA tournaments,” she whispered, “a title is placed above that board every day. Today’s ‘Moving Day,’ while the first day is always ‘Coming Out Day.’ The LPGA didn’t like that, and made them take it down Friday. They suggested, ‘Here We Go,’ instead.”

I wonder what they had against “Coming Out Day”? I made it clear I was coming out today, and they didn’t lock the doors.

Apparently there are a number of things I don’t understand about the LPGA. I was told the tour has a five-point plan to get more attention, which includes making players approachable. I asked golfer Laura Diaz a question at a news conference, and she said she had no time to talk and walked off.

I asked LPGA senior media relations director Neil Reid to put me in touch with Jan Butterfield, the women’s skin care, hair and fashion consultant, and I never heard from him again until the end of the day when he said Diaz wanted to know if I wanted to talk to her on the phone.

Knowing the LPGA’s interest in sex these days, I presumed it was going to be one of those 900 or 976 calls, so I declined. They are so difficult to get approved when you put them on your expense report.

Instead I talked to seven fans, making it the first time I’ve ever spoke to half of the crowd in attendance at a professional sporting event. “Some of these women need some work on the way they dress,” said John H.

“We were watching on TV last week,” Marian H. said, “and there was this one girl with a red top stretched real tight, who was well-endowed, too. Her belly was showing and her pants were tight.”

I spent the next three hours looking for a golfer here who looked anything like that, but came up flat. I suppose I could have asked the LPGA senior media relations director, but I felt uncomfortable trying to wake him up.

*

I DID find five skinny models showing a lot of skin by the main scoreboard, and because I’m a paid observer I took note of every change of clothes from the cocktail dresses to the swimming wraps to the evening gowns.

I noticed a guy gawking at the models, surprised to find the gawker was Mark Warholy, a Times employee from our San Fernando Valley office.

“I’m just wondering what it would be like to take a test drive,” he said, and I thought that was pretty crude of him. But then I noticed the new car on display behind the models, and I guess if the LPGA really wants to attract the guys, it should have the golfers driving from hole to hole in new hot rods--with tinted windows.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in an e-mail from Thomas F.:

“Hey, Buster, what are you going to do when the Dodgers really show you, and start hitting and pitching and win it all?”

Probably celebrate my 103rd birthday.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com.