Suzy Whaley applauds Lexi Thompson for stepping outside her comfort zone to take on the men.
Now a groundbreaking past president of the PGA of America, Whaley became the first woman to compete in a PGA Tour event since the great Babe Zaharias in 1945.The field and the scene next week in Vegas will be much different for Thompson than it was for Whaley, who laughed out loud when David Duval introduced himself on the putting green. Whaley actually credits much of her success that week to a chip shot Peter Jacobsen taught her during a practice round.
“Yesterday the world was talking about women’s golf more in one day than I heard for nine months to the Solheim Cup,” said Whaley. I think any of us who played, and I'll speak for myself, we know the pros and cons – we lived through it. I just didn't have to live through it with social media. I lived through it with the U.S. Postal Service.
I wasn't doing it for that. I was doing it for my daughters. I was doing it to showcase to the world that PGA of America wants to grow the game, they want to get people around the world playing the game. If I can have the guts to step out on this golf course, I would hope that would inspire somebody to step out on any golf course.
For me, certainly anytime you step outside of your comfort zone and do something that you feel is something you would never have done but do it, you certainly have another platform to take another step up the railing and say, ‘I did that, I can try this. I can manage this. I can fail at this, and it's going to be OK. I wouldn't like it, but I would live through it.’
But if she plays great she's going to do the same thing. Does it condemn women's golf and women's sport? Oh my gosh, the history of women's sports and women's golf is far bigger and greater than one person playing a golf tournament in one moment in time. For Lexi, in that moment and time, if you're asked by the sponsor and you say yes, you're going to go play in that event. Did she take a spot? Yes, she did. But at the same time, she was given that by the sponsor.
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