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Holy salkow, Batman, Miki’s back! Yes, Japan’s very own Babe on Ice, Miki Ando, roared back to form in the opening event of the Grand Prix figure skating series, not only winning October’s Skate America competition in Connecticut, but overshadowing younger teen star Mao Asada, everybody’s current tip for greatness. Ando, of course, was panned after finishing a disappointing 15th at the Turin Olympics, but she’s lost a bit of chunkiness and taken her skating to a higher level; maybe now she will start to fulfill her promise. Next up on the calendar is the NHK Trophy from November 30 to December 3 in Nagano. Japan’s women skaters are hot right now. Catch them while you can. FV See sports listings for details.
| By
Fred Varcoe
Tigress on the prowl
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She’s the Tiger (Tigress?) of the LPGA.
She’s the only woman on the men’s tour (not including
Phil Mickelson). She was the most successful golfer of 2002.
And she’s on her way to Japan.
She is Annika Sorenstam, and the swinging Swede will be at
next month’s Nichirei Cup World Ladies tournament (May
8-11 at the Tokyo Yomiuri Country Club in western Tokyo) en
route to a historic appearance on the men’s PGA Tour,
at The Bank of America Colonial tournament in Fort Worth,
Texas, May 22-25.
For those who think women don’t belong at a golf club,
look out—changes are a-coming. Michelle Wie, a 13-year-old
phenom, is regularly blasting drives 300 yards down the fairways,
and she isn’t even on the women’s tour yet. The
32-year-old Sorenstam was fourth in driving distance in 2002,
with a 265-yard average that she managed to raise to 280 yards
in the first three tournaments of this year. Curiously, for
a golfer with 43 tournament victories under her belt, she’s
not the hottest putter out there, finishing a lowly 39th on
the rankings in 2002. What she does do is get on the green
more regularly than anyone else and make the putts count when
she has to.
Sorenstam won an astonishing 11 times on the LPGA Tour last
year—only one other female golfer has won more in a year—and
scooped up nearly $3 million in prize money. That might pale
in significance compared to the nearly $7 million Tiger Woods
earned, but Sorenstam finished over $1 million ahead of the
No. 2 golfer on the tour, Pak Se Ri. Like Tiger, Sorenstam
also doesn’t mind traveling, winning in Europe and Australia
to raise her win total to 13 in 2002. Not surprisingly, she
was named the Rolex Player of the Year for a fifth time, and
her scoring average of 68.70 was the lowest ever and the first
time 69 had been breached over a season. En route, she picked
up her fourth major (the Kraft Nabisco Championship) and broke
20 LPGA records, including tying the mark for largest margin
of victory in a 54-hole tournament (11 strokes) and becoming
the first woman to total $9 million in earnings.
Is that it? Well, no. She has 126 Top-10 finishes to her name,
she was the 1991 NCAA champion, the world amateur champion
in 1992, and the 1994 LPGA Rookie of the Year. On top of that,
she fired an incredible (unless you’re me playing a nine-hole
course) 59 on a par-72 course at the Standard Register PING
tournament in 2001. In short, she’s making other players
look like dummies. As with Tiger, her closest rivals (South
Korea’s Pak Se Ri and Australian Karrie Webb) should
be superstars in their own right, but their achievements are
invariably overshadowed by the deeds of the Super Swede. Sorenstam’s
decision to take on the men at The Colonial has the golf world
buzzing—and a lot of men worried. Anyone finishing below
her will probably head for the Asian Tour in shame.
So what chance do the regular grunts on the Japan LPGA Tour
stand? Probably not very much. Japan’s women golfers
haven’t made much of an impression on the world of golf
in recent years, with their brightest hope, power hitter Akiko
Fukushima, proving to be mediocre when stacked against the
best in the world on the US LPGA Tour. Of course, most of
the Japanese women, like the men, don’t travel much and
might put up more of a challenge on their familiar home turf.
Defending champion Yuri Fudo can fight as well as anyone on
the tour—assuming she recovers from a broken little finger—but,
like Tiger, Sorenstam will be looking to stick another flag
in her golfing map of the world and, in the end, there may
be little anyone can do about it.
Nichirei Cup World Ladies, May 8-11,
Tokyo Yomiuri Country Club. See listings for further details.
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