Let’s hear it for Annika Sorenstam! The graceful Swede with the power drive, first woman in more than half a century to play a PGA event, attracted a huge gallery of fans-and four times as many reporters as there were players-to the Colonial tournament in Fort Worth. And when did you ever see high fives and hugs on the PGA tour?
She wasn’t there to win, she said, just to challenge herself, to see how she would do.
And in a game where concentration usually trumps power, Sorenstam remained focused in the face of distractions that would put most off their game. Missing the 36-hole cut by four strokes, she gracefully admitted she had been nervous the entire time but was pleased with her first-round 71, saying, “It was more than I could ever have expected.”
This was not a gender thing for her, trying to prove something to the guys. The top woman player in the LPGA said she just wanted to see if she could cut it on their turf.
That reminded me of another female athlete who broke new ground in a sport that until the ’70s excluded women altogether. Sue Sally Hale, who died last month at 65, had to disguise herself as a man to play tournament polo for 20 years. Winning the respect of her teammates, who pressured the U.S. Polo Assn. to open its membership to women, she was finally admitted in 1972. It wasn’t a gender thing for her either, she just wanted to play polo, and there was no ladies tour.
As a child growing up in Pacific Palisades, Sue Sally Jones wanted nothing more than to ride. We kept our horses at the Riviera Country Club, which in those days had stables, arenas, three polo fields and a bridle path around the golf course. Every year the club hosted international polo matches, drawing teams from all over the Western Hemisphere.
Our first paying jobs were exercising polo ponies, washing down and walking them between chukkars, flagging goals and posting scores during the games. For most of us, polo meant pocket money. For Sue Sally, it was a passion. She learned to use a mallet, and would stick-and-ball on the practice fields while I was sneaking off to the upper field to see if I could coax the ponies to jump. After she had worn out all the horses she had to ride, she would hit balls from atop a wooden horse in the practice cage. We didn’t understand her. Oh, we all tried swinging a mallet, hitting a few balls, but we weren’t very good at it and we didn’t see the point. Even if we got good, we figured we’d never get a chance to play. But Sue Sally saw magic in the crack of a mallet striking the white balsa wood sphere, smacking it hundreds of feet down a mowed field. Kind of like Sorenstam’s 260-yard drives down the fairway. Who knows what sparks the imagination of a child to pursue some illogical quest for excellence in a gentlemen’s sport.
For me, jumping horses was thrilling, and you didn’t have to be chosen to be on a team. It was just you and the horse and the jumps. Measuring the distance with your eye to arrive at the perfect take-off spot, maintaining the horse’s balance, frame and impulsion, made the leap effortless. It seemed like flying.
Show jumping was in its infancy when I was learning to ride. No corporate sponsors or TV coverage. We competed in children’s jumping classes and equitation where gender wasn’t an issue. Girls outnumbered boys and did as well or better. Strength was less of a factor than concentration, and girls actually seemed to have the edge.
Without the distraction of gender bias, I could focus on schooling my horse and learning the technical difficulties of each course. Even so, I remember the particular thrill of winning over professional male riders whom I respected.
When the Riviera polo fields and stables closed in 1951 to make way for Paul Revere School, Sue Sally followed the polo ponies west on Sunset Boulevard to Will Rogers Polo Club, and I followed the jumper trainers to the Valley. We lost touch. Many years later, I picked up a copy of Polo magazine and saw that she had been named one of 20 legends of polo.
She’d overcome the gender barrier by skill and determination. She followed her dream and, as a highly respected coach, helped others to follow theirs. It never was easy. More than once, male players on an opposing team threatened to run her over, but she was never intimidated.
Sorenstam faced the same kind of verbal, if not physical, abuse from PGA players like Vijay Singh, who withdrew from the Colonial after making some really nasty remarks. He came off looking a fool while she brought dignity, respect and a huge gallery of spectators to the tournament. She says she’s content to take the memory of her experience back to the LPGA tour.
Here’s to the girls who followed their bliss.