Circus Coming to Colonial

She is playing an LPGA Tour event this weekend in Virginia, but no one should be shocked if Annika Sorenstam already has set her watch to Fort Worth time. In three weeks, Sorenstam will show up at Colonial Country Club and try to do what David Duval, Sergio Garcia, Jim Furyk, Mark O’Meara and Charles Howell III failed to do there last year.

That would be make the cut.

Will she or won’t she? If she makes the cut, what about the shell-shocked male pros who don’t? And if she doesn’t, does it really matter?

It’s a topic that has drawn a ton of reaction. From Tiger Woods to Ty Votaw to Tim Finchem, almost everyone has weighed in on the subject, except for Andy Rooney, but he has probably been too busy practicing his scowls.

In fact, Sorenstam’s foray into men’s professional golf promises to be one of the year’s most heavily covered tournaments other than the majors.

The media will turn out in record numbers to follow Sorenstam, lured by the spectacle of the best female player in the world playing against a representative sampling of the best male players in the world.

It’s going to be a circus. And those are Sorenstam’s words, which she used the day in February she announced her intention to invade the men’s tour. As far as anyone can tell, outside of a few anonymous quotes from LPGA Tour players, the only person upset about the whole thing is Nick Price.

He won last year at Colonial, but lately, he has been getting lambasted with Sorenstam questions instead of basking in the glow associated with the defending champion. Price also said the whole deal sounds like a cheap publicity stunt. He’s wrong about that. It’s certainly not cheap.

Price is being tacky, but he’s actually doing everybody a favor by getting the negativity ball rolling, because you’re going to hear a lot of people starting to unload on this venture, most of them refusing to allow their names to be used in print.

Woods is not among them, however. He is on the record saying that he sees nothing wrong with Sorenstam’s playing Colonial, but that it would injure the LPGA’s image if she stinks up the joint.

That’s where Votaw stepped in. Because he is the commissioner of the LPGA, Votaw is particularly keen on how his association and its best player are perceived, mainly, by gosh, so those wonderful sponsors don’t fall out of love with the golf product he’s responsible for running.

Votaw says anyone who wants Sorenstam to do poorly isn’t an LPGA fan anyway, so he’s not going to lose them. Others are intrigued, he says, and Sorenstam can make them her fans and fans of the LPGA. Just one big, happy family. Wonderful, isn’t it?

Then there is Finchem, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, who says Sorenstam at Colonial will be good for golf and stir up a lot of interest among the fans. How well Sorenstam will play, Finchem says he doesn’t have a clue.

No one else does either. Sorenstam does lead the LPGA in driving distance and Colonial isn’t that long, only 7,080 yards. The question is whether she can hit it straight and whether she will be able to spin the ball close enough to the holes on Colonial’s smallish greens. Chances are, she’s going to have to putt exceptionally well and that’s sometimes a problem for her.

The cut at Colonial last year was three-over-par 143, and 72 players in the field of 124 made it. Can Sorenstam make it this year?

A reasonable conclusion is that it doesn’t matter. If she makes the cut, it’s probably the golf story of the year. If Sorenstam misses the cut, she will collect bouquets for trying. If she misses the cut and makes a mess of the thing, it’s still not going to matter to the casual fans that she and Mark Steinberg, her agent at IMG, are trying to attract in order to impress sponsors, both existing and potential.

Meanwhile, there is one keen observer of the situation this week in Virginia. That’s where Connecticut club pro Suzy Whaley is in the same field as Sorenstam and playing the LPGA’s Michelob Light Open. Whaley won a PGA of America club pro event that automatically qualified her for the PGA Tour’s Greater Hartford Open in July. Sorenstam is beating her to the punch by two months, but Whaley says she doesn’t care.

There also is a distinction between their circumstances involving the men’s pro tour. Whaley played her way (from the forward tees) into her PGA Tour event and Sorenstam received a sponsor’s invitation to hers. But Whaley says that doesn’t matter, that she doesn’t know Sorenstam and won’t speak for her. Whaley does say she is a huge supporter of Sorenstam and believes Sorenstam has a great chance to make the Colonial cut.

Whaley even knows what those male pros who are beaten by a woman at Colonial must do next.

She said they’re going to have to practice harder.