"WE got next." Ladies are up next
on local pro golf sceneNow it's the Ladies' -- as in Ladies Professional Golf Association -- turn to attract the attention of golf fans locally. The LPGA Cup Noodles Hawaiian Ladies Open is scheduled for Thursday through Saturday at Kapolei.
Among the top women's pros entered are defending champion and LPGA player of the year Annika Sorenstam, Laura Davies, Hall of Famers Betsy King and Patty Sheehan, and 12 of the leading money winners on the Japan LPGA Tour.
If their tournament comes even close to anything like the final United Airlines Hawaiian Open the past weekend, it should be a rousing success.
While no longer the title sponsor, United Airlines couldn't have asked for a better closure to its sponsorship of the PGA Tour event at the Waialae Country Club. With Sony taking over next year, it ended United's 33-year run -- the longest-running affiliation of a Tour event.
With John Huston setting all-time records in winning the Hawaiian Open with a 28-under-par 260, thanks to 31 birdies, United should have its corporate name in the PGA Tour record book for years to come.
The touring pros are grateful that Sony has stepped in to continue the event at Waialae. But they will definitely miss the airline's sponsorship, especially its discount rate of 75 percent. Needless to say, working on an air deal is one of Sony's immediate priorities.
However, the Sony Open's $2.6 million purse -- and the winner's payoff of $460,000 -- should be incentive enough for the pros to return to Waialae no matter the airfare.
I don't know if there's any second-guessing going on with the United people for not continuing sponsorship of the Hawaiian Open, but there's got to be withdrawal pains.
More so after all those gorgeous scenes of Hawaii on national television at a time when people on the East Coast and Midwest are socked in with snow and those in California are pelted by rainstorms. United couldn't buy that kind of publicity. Then, again, maybe they did.
Perhaps United's refusal was premature, considering that future tournaments on the West Coast swing have now been greatly enhanced with added money by Bank of America as a presenting sponsor and its importance in the PGA Tour's point-rating system for two new world events in 1999.
To qualify, golfers now will have to play more West Coast tournaments. No longer will the season open in Florida as the long-standing joke goes.
ADDED to that, there's now the prestigious Mercedes Championship -- an event for 1998 tournament winners only -- at Kapalua the week before the PGA event at Waialae. You can bet the majority of them -- even Tiger Woods, when, not if, he wins this year -- will stay around another week to play here.
In fact, Fred Couples, who's vacationing here this week after playing in the Hawaiian Open, is already looking forward to playing in both events next year. He secured a spot in the Mercedes Championship with his victory in the Bob Hope Classic last month.
"I don't know how it came about, but the people of Mercedes made a good choice. Kapalua is a beautiful place," Couples said. "The only problem is the people of Kapalua worked a lot of years to run a good and fun tournament. Now we're going there more business-like.
"Let's just say, would I rather still be at La Costa (previous site of the Mercedes Championship) and play Kapalua? Yes. But now that we're there, I'll definitely play there and here (at Waialae) next year. That's good because I'll start the year with two weeks that will be warm and almost seem like a vacation," Couples said.