All Yani Tseng wanted to do was let the waves of applause wash over her, sign a few autographs and collect her trophy for winning the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
No such luck. As she sat inside the scorers’ tent signing her scorecard, LPGA officials stood sentry, glancing anxiously at their watches. A volunteer in the scoring tent stuck her head outside to say, “We’re going as fast as we can.”
As soon as Tseng stepped outside, she was whisked to the 18th green and led to the water as if she were CBS’ mule.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“No time to dillydally,” someone said under her breath.
“Don’t sign anything,” ordered another.
The final-round coverage would not be complete without Tseng’s splashdown in Poppy’s Pond, and the top of the hour, when the tournament faded to black, was fast approaching.
For all involved, it was the most nerve-racking few minutes of the day. Tseng, who won her second major championship, by one stroke over Suzann Pettersen, made it into the pond on time but came up sputtering.
“I was trying to get out,” she said later, “because I don’t know how to swim.”
The first golfer to go for a swim after winning the Kraft Nabisco Championship was Amy Alcott in 1988, and it has become a tradition, like drivers guzzling milk after winning the Indianapolis 500.
Alcott’s dip was spontaneous, a joyful reaction to ending a year-and-a-half-long drought. But in recent years, the spontaneity has been wrung from the act, reducing what was intended as a celebration into just another event staged for television.
Worse, it has become, for some of the golfers, another source of anxiety in what is already a stressful week. Tseng mentioned in her news conference on Sunday that she was a bundle of nerves on Saturday night, and one of her concerns was how to jump in the water if she won.
And it is not just their own leaps that golfers have to worry about. Karen Stupples, the third-round leader, was asked if her three-year-old son knew how to swim, a nod to the fact it has become de rigueur for golfers’ families to accompany them into the water.
“He can’t swim, no,” Stupples said, adding: “So then you kind of have to think, if I win, do I take him in or do I not take him in? Oh, dear. Let’s not think about that till it happens.”
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