Spent the day walking around London Hunt Golf and Country Club and listening to interviews by Lorie Kane, Natalie Gulbis and Se Ri Pak.
Gulbis had to answer a few questions about her swimsuit calendar, and whether she’ll win this week and put an end to the Anna Kournikova talk.
Her remarks on the subject show the extent of her media training. In reference to a question about whether her calendar overshadowed her career, Gulbis said this:
“I think it was a little bit on my first year on Tour because I had a little more press from stuff outside of golf and I was pretty much a Top 40 player….”
A “little bit?” You had a freakin’ reality show!
Oh, sorry Natalie, continue. Oh yes, this is what I expected:
“Anybody out here, anybody that tees it up this week, these are the best players in the world, so any of them are great players.”
Right. Too bad the best player in the world is at a tournament in Sweden at the moment.
I must admit I like Morgan Pressel. The girl’s feisty and well-spoken. She also flew to Canada from Europe and didn’t complain. A few PGA Tour players could take note of this for next year’s Canadian Open when it follows the British. Note to the guys, here’s what Pressel did:
Well, yesterday was a long day, but it wasn’t too bad. I mean coming back, as long as I stay up — I went to bed at 9 pm and slept until about 6 am — so I was pretty much settled. I’m okay.
Catch that Phil Mickelson — can’t use that one as your excuse for not coming to Canada next year, especially given that you’ll travel by private jet.
I must admit that Wednesdays at pro tournaments are not the most entertaining for reporters covering them. We have to come up with a storyline, especially since there’s no actual golf to be covered, and you have to determine what might make readers interested in the event. This, I’ll admit, was tough for me today and I struggled to come up with an engaging way to start my story. In the end, I went with a lede about how the tournament had come back from the dead and the field was stronger than expected.
Lorie Kane certainly feels new sponsor, Canadian National Railway, is doing a good job of promoting the event, and she noted they are even taking better care of the caddies. Oh, and the addition of a couple of hundred thousand to the purse surely didn’t hurt either.
Interesting to note there are something like 23 Koreans in the field (including five with the surname “Kim”), which outnumbers the Canadians by four.
There was also plenty of talk about Michelle Wie firing her fourth caddie in the last year. Gotta love the doublespeak from her PR firm:
“A public relations firm in New York released a statement from the family that said Johnson’s departure “comes as part of Michelle’s maturation as a golfer, part of which is learning from many different bright golf minds.”
Greg Johnson, the caddie in question, had an interesting response:
“I was shocked and surprised. I thought we had a successful year,” Johnston told golfdigest.com. “And I was extremely disappointed that no one named ‘Wie’ gave me the news.”
More of the same from the Wie camp. Who is running this show?
Full story is here.
Oh, and Juli Inkster has withdrawn from the tournament citing exhaustion, along with a couple of women whose names I didn’t recognize.
