The McDonald's LPGA Championship said goodbye to Bulle Rock in improbable fashion Sunday, with a Swedish rookie named Anna Nordqvist earning her first tour victory on a sun-splashed afternoon in Harford County.
But don't let all the hugs and champagne-popping scene on the 18th hole fool you. Women's golf is struggling.
Forget the fact that the LPGA Championship still doesn't have a home for 2010.
Forget that there are open dates on this year's schedule.
Forget that major sponsors, whacked by the recession, are pulling out in droves.
And forget that TV ratings are flatter than a 1-iron.
No, the tour has an even bigger problem on its hands right now: The players are boring.
Understand, I say this as a boring person myself.
But you're not paying 25 bucks a ticket to see me slice a drive into another fairway or scream a putt 6 feet past the hole.
You're not tuning in to the Golf Channel and enduring all those commercials for golf balls and financial services to watch me shank an approach shot.
But when you are shelling out money at the gate or watching golf on TV, you want to see players having fun.
Sure, you want to see them play great golf. You want to see them make impossible shots.
If they're attractive, that's a bonus.
But you also want to see players with charisma, with personality, with fire in the belly.
You want to see them smile every once in a while, and not act like they're heading off to another shift in the coal mine.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what's missing from the LPGA Tour.
With the great Annika Sorenstam in retirement - and let's face it, she was no ball of fire on the course, either - here are the top five players in the Rolex Women's World Golf Rankings: Lorena Ochoa, Yani Tseng, Paula Creamer, Cristie Kerr and Ji Yai Shin.
Mexico's Ochoa, with 26 tournament victories, two majors and more than $13 million in career earnings, is a sublime player but doesn't really move the dial with American golf audiences.
Tseng, from Taiwan, is a second-year player just finding her way on the tour, as is South Korea's Shin, a rookie. Don't look for fist-pumps, is what I'm saying.
Veteran Kerr is personable, all right. But she's personable the way your mom is personable at Thanksgiving dinner.
No, of the five, only Creamer, with her all-pink outfits and pink golf balls, has the charisma to earn an emotional investment from U.S. golf fans.
