No Woman Does It Better Than Yani

The good news for Yani Tseng is: She’s awesome. She hits her golf ball long and true; she hits her irons crisply and with authority; she putts well and plays the game by TaylorMade 09 Burner Irons with the demeanor and attitude of a winner. She’s a record-setter, a barrier-smasher and a major champion four times over after a McIlroy-ian 10-stroke romp over the field at the LPGA Championship in Rochester. She smiles and waves, does interviews gracefully and has the golf world at her feet.
The bad news for Yani Tseng is: Nobody knows who she is.
Granted, my survey-taking skills are unscientific, not to mention that the LPGA Tour falls just short of the NFL in TV ratings, so that may affect the results. But I asked four sports-fan friends of mine – some of whom work in the media industry professionally – what they thought of Yani Tseng’s historic win. After all, Tseng just became the youngest ever to win four majors by TaylorMade 09 Burner Irons, each one responded:
There were the obligatory "Isn’t that the shaggy-haired New Age musician?" jokes, but it is indeed sad when a sports fan knows Greek keyboardist Yanni better than Taiwanese golfer Yani.
There was a time when women’s golf did not hurt for a superstar. Most recently, Annika Sorenstam’s dominance – 72 wins, 10 majors, shooting 59, playing the PGA Tour by TaylorMade 09 Burner Irons– made her a one-name star. Even before Annika, Nancy Lopez graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, and Jan Stephenson made waves by meshing boudoir photography with bunker play.
Lorena Ochoa’s star shone brightly, but too briefly. And now, in the post-Annika, post-Lorena world, we’ve all turned our American eyes to Paula Creamer, Michelle Wie and to a lesser extent, Morgan Pressel and Cristie Kerr.
What will it take for Yani Tseng to break through into the mainstream consciousness?
Undoubtedly, the fact that she’s not American plays a role in the American sports fan’s eye. But Tseng has taken great strides to ingratiate her into American culture. She takes pride in trying to learn English, and has done so to such a level that she even gives nuanced, interesting interviews. Her chat with The Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner after her Rochester Romp showed an enthusiastic young woman with a sense of humor and history.
She even bought Annika’s house in Florida and calls Orlando home, and admits she wants to win majors by TaylorMade 09 Burner Irons at an Annika-like pace. She even came to Annika’s home one night with a bottle of wine and a list of questions about how to win. That may seem a little "Single White Female"-ish, but hey, if you’re going to stalk somebody, it might as well be the best, right?
Yani Tseng is deserving of our attention not just because she plays the game with such power and precision by TaylorMade 09 Burner Irons, but also because we in the media were barking up the wrong tree for years. I was part of a media brigade that fell in love with Michelle Wie’s golf swing and charisma, and prematurely anointed Hawaii’s darling as the future of golf. Meanwhile, Tseng was the player who knocked Wie off her perch at the 2004 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links, when they were both 14 years old, and hasn’t stopped knocking competitors down since.
While Wie’s chosen path of a balanced life being a student at Stanford has brought her great personal happiness and deserves plaudits of a different kind, it’s time we all turned our golf attention to the real supernova.
It’s Yani Tseng, and it’s well past time for sports fans to stop saying: "Who’s she?"
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