Golf Grand Slam In Sight
Just imagine this scenario heading into next week’s PGA Championship….. Tiger Woods has already strolled to a runaway victory in The Masters at the beginning of April. He follows it up in June with a narrow play-off win at Merion for the US Open title, before casting aside the field in a masterful display at Muirfield to take home The Open Championship. The first three Major titles of the year are in the bag and the fabled ‘Grand Slam’ is within reach. Three down, and just one to go.
Now, on the eve of the Major that could make history, think of the media hoopla, the hullaballoo, the hype. Every sporting headline, every camera would be turned to one man. The rest of the golfing world (if not the entire sporting world) would effectively cease to exist.
If you ever needed evidence of how much ground women’s sport has to make up, this is surely it. Right now, in the parallel universe that is the ladies’ game, that exact scenario has unfolded. Today, Inbee Park tees off at the Old Course at St. Andrews in pursuit of her fourth (and the fourth) consecutive Major of the calendar year. If she’s successful, she’ll have achieved this Holy Grail of golf – the Grand Slam – but it’ll no doubt pass with about the same degree of coverage as Tiger’s win at the Farmers Insurance Open.
The pedants will point out that, if Park does win the Women’s British Open, it wouldn’t be regarded as the complete Grand Slam just yet, as the status of the Evian Masters has this year been elevated to become the fifth Major of the Ladies’ golfing calendar. But shifting the goal posts doesn’t create a valid argument. You’d have to be pretty mean to deny her the achievement should she win at St. Andrews, but not in France. Ever since the Grand Slam came about as a concept (credit’s given to the Atlanta Journal’s O.B. Keeler who borrowed the term from bridge), it constituted winning four Majors in a year. If Park wins on Sunday, she’s done it as far as I am concerned.
Getting back to the magnitude of it all – nobody in the game of golf has ever won four professional Major Championships in a calendar year. Bobby Jones had his “Impregnable quadrilateral” winning the original Slam which included the US and British Amateur Championships alongside the Opens, and Tiger had his “Tiger Slam”, holding all four at once but not in the same year, but it’s in the women’s game that players have come closest in modern times. Inbee Park is the latest, but it’s only very recently that Yani Tseng was being lauded as the untouchable golfer of her generation. Before that there was Lorena Ochoa, Annika Sorenstam, and Karrie Webb. Perhaps this frequent passing of the baton as the greatest in the game detracts from the achievement in the eyes of some? For whatever reason, it does suggest that it’s easier to dominate in the women’s game than in the men’s, but that shouldn’t belittle the achievement, the talent and the hard work. We all know how difficult the game is even before you start worrying about the competition. And how form has a habit of being temporary.
Yet for the large part, the golfing headlines this week are focusing on Rory McIlroy’s lifestyle, Lee Westwood’s choice of psychologist, and the arrival of Hunter Mahan’s daughter. Thrilling, isn’t it? Skirts or trousers, a Grand Slam attempt should be leading the headlines.
I do understand why things are they way they are, with all the commercial pressures and rewards associated with the men’s game, but if ever there was a time to give the ladies’ game a boost in coverage, surely this is it. And at St. Andrews, the most famous venue in the sport, with its roll call of illustrious past champions. Completing the Grand Slam here would be a sensational story.
For the record, Inbee Park’s quest gets underway at 7.03am on Thursday 1st August, with BBC coverage across all four days of the tournament. But no matter what the result, we have the chance to watch it all unfold and acknowledge an already great champion. My only fear is that this immensely talented young lady might find it easier to capture the Grand Slam than the headlines on the back pages.