USA TODAY International Edition
LPGA pros play through to Rio
Fatigue won’t keep top players from Olympics
The debacle that is Olympic golf has been a public relations disaster for the game of golf, but not for LPGA tour players.
Concerns about the format, the course, safety, scheduling and the Zika virus prompted a wave of the world’s best men’s golfers to withdraw from the event, all while the best females pack more into an already packed schedule.
Stacy Lewis is five weeks into a six- week tournament stretch. The UL International Crown here this week will be Gerina Piller’s sixth start in the last seven weeks. The Women’s British Open follows next week, then, two weeks later, both will tee it up alongside Lexi Thompson in Rio for Team USA.
“You don’t tend to recognize how tired you are mentally and physically until you stop,” Piller said Tuesday. “During that off week, I don’t touch my clubs at all.”
Piller’s situation is unique, too, because her husband, Martin Pill- er, is a PGA Tour golfer. It’s a struggle finding time to see each other during times like this, but they make it work.
“We’re a traveling circus,” she said. “Last week I saw him for a couple days. He missed the cut, and it’s kind of a bittersweet thing. I want to see him, but I want him to play well.”
Lewis doesn’t view her busy schedule as a bad thing.
“I see it as a great opportunity for our tour,” she said. “I’ve never done six weeks in a row, and we’re going to get through it. You take every day for what it is. … It’s just the way this year kind of works out.”
The men, it seems, do not feel the same.
Citing an “extremely busy playing schedule around the time of the Olympics,” Australian Adam Scott has been among the most vocal in regard to the scheduling issue, and he was one of the first to pull out of the competition.
Americans Jordan Spieth, the world No. 3, and Dustin Johnson, No. 2, along with No. 1 Jason Day of Australia and No. 4 Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland and are among the men not playing.