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| LPGA tournament presents once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 1:55 PM PDT If you’ve never seen a professional golfer at work, this weekend affords a rare opportunity. The Ladies Professional Golf Association’s Samsung World Championship comes to the Ocean Course at Half Moon Bay Golf Links today through Sunday. Golfers are like other professional athletes, except they need a jeweler’s eye and an attention to detail that would make them worthy captains of a nuclear submarine. It’s not that they have more hand-eye coordination than your average major league baseball player or that the college kid on the free throw line is facing any less portentous a moment than Annika Sorenstam when she leans over a putt worth $1 million. It’s just that these are women for whom perfection is seen only by squinting through the keyhole of a locked door. They can’t get there, but the view is so appealing it becomes an obsession unlike anything else in sports. Come early and watch them hit a bucket of balls if you think otherwise. And this tournament is special, even by professional golfing standards. The LPGA invites only the 20 best women golfers in the world. As a result, the tournament has grown in stature. In a sport in which all championships are not created equal, golfing legend Laura Davies calls the Samsung the tour’s fifth major. Such an event — one, by the way, with a $1 million purse — requires an international field. Thankfully, the tour shelved one of the worst ideas in professional sports since Jackie Robinson’s playing days when it decided this summer against requiring players to become proficient in English. As a result, players from Taiwan, South Korea, Sweden and Brazil will join those from the United States without having to worry about those who would otherwise have turned out to protest the wrong-headed LPGA policy. And, from here, that’s more important than a fleeting glimpse of the Coastside on television sets. It’s more important than filling area restaurants and providing fundraising opportunities for local baseball and softball players who will help with parking. It’s a rare thing to have professional athletes in town. It’s rarer still to have young women who have come from the four corners of the earth to show us what they can do on the field of play. Bring your daughter to the tournament. You’ll be glad you did. — Clay Lambert |