This is the season of the filly who can compete with (outrun, actually) the boys, so I kept seeing symmetry between Rachel Alexandra’s emergence, entrance and impressive performance in Saturday’s Preakness and the emergence, entrance (via LPGA Qualifying School) and impressive performance of Michelle Wie in last week’s LPGA Sybase Classic held at Upper Montclair Country Club just west of New York City.
Perhaps other readers who are horse racing fans and golfers sense the similarity, if not parallel progression. Of course Wie isn’t competing against men anymore and when she did, other than the curiosity factor, nothing much came of it.
To the similarities, however, we go. These can’t be judged the salad days for either the LPGA or thoroughbred racing. Whether it’s the backstretch or the betting window, attendance or other barometers that measure interest, thoroughbred horse racing is in slow, inexorable long-term decline. (I’m sure counter arguments can be made citing stud fees and yearling sales, but if I were a betting man, I know there are a lot more venues for me to make a legal wager these days than Aqueduct-Belmont-Saratoga and Monmouth…)
In any case, The Belmont, the third leg of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown, should have a mano-a-manomatch-race quality to it June 6 should Rachel Alexandra, the filly, and her male competitors, most notably Mine That Bird, square off. The Belmont, the longest of the races at a mile and a half, saw a few horses come into the race having won the first two legs of The Triple Crown during the early part of the decade only to experience crushing defeats that deflated enormous crowds. Putting the Preakness winner and Derby winner along side each other again, after their stirring one-two finish Saturday, should create an excitement of a different variety.
Wie, on the other hand, hasn’t quite reached the level of a Triple Crown victory, but that day may not be far off. And by this I mean a victory in an LPGA event — she’s playing this week in Corning, NY — or, more fittingly, a women’s major, not a men’s event. (I think that goal is essentially unattainable.) So, where stories in recent years had concentrated on Wie’s injury (to her wrist, possibly her ego), indifferent play, conflicts between family, coach and agents, Wie is finally putting together sustained superb play that rates just shy of excellence on the LPGA Tour. She finished tied for third Sunday, closing with a 73 on an unseasonably cold, blustery day when the stroke average rose to 74.31. By comparison, Brittany Lincicome, already a winner this year and twice a winner on the LPGA Tour and playing in the same second-to-last group as Wie, shot 77 and finished T6.
Will Wie win? With three top 10s in six events so far this year, it certainly seems as if that might happen any week. And what a lift for the LPGA Tour that would be, as Wie may be the transcendent star for whom that tour is searching.
Having listened to some of the LPGA Tour’s stars at midweek press conferences, I came away impressed by Lorena Ochoa’s modesty (it borders on the to-a-fault variety) and Cristie Kerr’s professionalism. For the latter, it wasn’t always the case. She once was the precocious teenager-on-tour with rough edges and a competitive-combative streak that were misinterpreted as socially awkward when, it fact, it was probably just a normal quotient of adolescent immaturity. Now, of course, she’s a well-rounded, sophisticated, personable 11-time winner and LPGA star. The first six events of the LPGA’s season make me think that day will come for Wie, as well. — Robert Lohrer