Foreign Legion : Oakmont Becomes Popular Global Stop on LPGA Tour

GLENDALE —  Come rain or come, well, more rain, the LPGA’s stopover at the Oakmont Country Club in Glendale usually can count on plenty of headliners to put on a good show.

Sometimes with an international flavor.

No LPGA tournament is short on foreign golfers, especially Europeans who, as the British say, cross the “pond” regularly.

It is no different this year for the Valley of the Stars Championship that runs Friday through Sunday at venerable Oakmont, one of the most challenging courses on the tour.

“If you hold a tournament on a good course, you’ll get the players,” defending champion Dale Eggeling said. “Everybody likes to come to L.A. because it’s such a fun town.”

Eggeling, a 23-year tour veteran, is part of a field showcasing 84 of the LPGA’s top 100 money winners in 1998, several top newcomers and a host of foreign players.

The $650,000 tournament, formerly known as the Los Angeles Women’s Championship, has 45 foreign players in the 132-player field.

They are led by Se Ri Pak of Korea, the LPGA’s rookie of the year in 1998; Lorie Kane of Canada and Swedes Annika Sorenstam, Liselotte Neumann and Helen Alfredsson, who lives part of the year in La Canada Flintridge.

Akiko Fukushima of Japan, Mi-Hyun Kim of Korea and A.J. Eathorne of Canada, the leading rookies on the tour this season, also are participating.

Of course, the tournament features some of the premier Americans, including Meg Mallon, Kris Tschetter, Dottie Pepper, Tina Barrett and Juli Inkster, all among the top-10 money winners this year.

Alfredsson is off to a fast start, finishing in the top eight in each of the three tournaments played this year. Mallon is coming off a second-place finish two weeks ago in the Office Depot tournament at West Palm Beach, Fla.

But the large contingent of foreign players at Oakmont is an indication that the tournament is becoming a microcosm of the LPGA Tour, once the sole domain of U.S. golfers.

There are 87 foreign players from 20 nations on the LPGA Tour. Forty are from Europe and 14 each are from Australia and Canada. England has the most players, 16, and Sweden has 12.

Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia and India are represented, each with one player.

By contrast, there were 38 foreign players on the LPGA Tour in 1990, led by Canada with 11.

Several of the foreign golfers on the tour played at American universities, including Alfredsson (U.S. International), Lisa Hackney (Florida) and Karen Stupples (Florida State) of England, Jenny Lidback (Texas Christian) of Peru and Mhairi McKay (Stanford) and Janice Moodie (San Jose State) of Scotland.

Stupples, a rookie, said the most serious European players aspire to play on the U.S. tour.

“The best players in the world play in this tour,” Stupples said. “The place where you can really test your ability is this arena.”

The foreign players are testing it quite nicely. Twenty-two LPGA events were won by foreign golfers last year and 17 the year before. Karrie Webb of Australia, fourth on the money list in 1998, won at West Palm Beach two weeks ago.

“The impact of the players from outside the United States has been extraordinary,” said Jim Ritts, LPGA commissioner. “It’s added to the drama. It’s created a lot of fan interest and it’s raised the bar of achievement. The sport has improved as a result.”

Ritts, who recently resigned to become chief operating officer for Digital Entertainment Network Inc. but will remain on the job through March, pointed to global interest on the tour as an economic boost.

The prize money, up to $36 million, is due greatly to world-wide TV revenues. Only 19 events were televised in 1995 compared to 33 this year and Seoul Broadcasting plans to broadcast every event, largely to follow Pak.

That kind of interest is making life easier for Kirsten Jacobsen, the Valley of the Stars coordinator. The tournament organizers, she said, mail invitations each year to the leading players on the tour. Some of the letters to foreign players, she said, have an added touch.

“One of the guys who works for the tournament is a Swede and he sent a letter in Swedish to Annika,” Jacobsen said.

“We like it to be as personal as possible.”

The players obviously noticed.

The tournament last year was shortened to 36 holes because of rain, and several others in the 1980s were hampered by storms, but Oakmont continues to lure the tour’s best players to its narrow fairways and fast greens.

“I love it because it’s a placement-type course,” Eggeling said. “You have to think on every shot. If you go to sleep, you pay for it.”

Perhaps that happened last year to Japanese veteran Hiromi Kobayashi, who squandered a three-shot lead on the final day, allowing Eggeling to catch her and then win in a sudden-death playoff.

But the agonizing loss isn’t keeping Kobayashi from this year’s tournament. She is among three Japanese golfers in the event.

The tournament, renamed this year to recognize the entire region and the event’s association with the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, is becoming more attractive to the players because of its placement on the LPGA schedule.

Hosted by Oakmont for the third consecutive year after a nine-year absence, the tournament comes after a one-week break and before the Hawaiian Open and Australian Masters.

It is, Jacobsen said, a nice bridge for the events that follow it.

“It’s not a tough sell to get [the players] to come.” Jacobsen said.

“We’d like to think we’re very significant to the LPGA, but we don’t have illusions of grandeur. We’re trying to let our reputation establish us as a favorite LPGA stop.”

For some of the foreign players, that already seems the case.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

VALLEY OF THE STARS

UPDATE

Terry-Jo Myers, a winner at Oakmont in 1997, is looking to rejoin LPGA tour after career-threatening accident

THE TOUR

* A look at results from early-season tournaments and the schedule ahead

* Money leaders and statistics for 1999

Page 11