Every week of the 2011 PGA Tour season, the editorial staff of the SI Golf Group will conduct an e-mail roundtable. Check in on Mondays for the unfiltered opinions of our writers and editors and join the conversation in the comments section below.
YANI WINS WOMEN’S BRITISH OPEN
Jim Gorant, senior editor, Sports Illustrated: Let’s get right to the action with the most important action of the week: Yani Tseng won her fifth major at 22 years old. What’s the ceiling for her? Who might challenge her?
Rick Lipsey, writer-reporter, Sports Illustrated: She’s the best golfer on earth. By a mile. Male or female. She won’t get near the props of many guys, including Rory, but she’ll win a lot more majors than all of them combined. Barring injury, a dozen majors, minimum.
Gary Van Sickle, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Five majors at 22? She’s on pace to win about 35 of them. Especially since the LPGA is going to five majors a year. I don’t see an immediate challenger for her. Michelle Wie and Lexi Thompson have the power, but they don’t have Yani’s touch around the greens. She played some very Scottish bump-and-run pitches at Carnoustie. It’s Yani’s tour now.
Mark Godich, senior editor, Sports Illustrated: She’s just going to keep piling them up. Most impressive to me is how relaxed she seems out there.
Jim Herre, managing editor, SI Golf Group: With the extra major Tseng could outpace Tiger Woods and put up some staggering numbers, but let’s see what the next few seasons bring. Tiger was the rare one to truly dominate for a long period of time.
Damon Hack, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: No ceiling for Yani, and no challenger on the horizon. I see a group of players getting wins here and there, but Yani is the dominant player in the world. We have finally identified the next Tiger Woods.
Lipsey: Having seen the LPGA at the Women’s Open, I can confirm: there is NO challenger. Lots of good sticks, but Yani is in a class by herself. She practices (on and off the course) as hard, and more important, as smartly, as Tiger.
Van Sickle: Odd thing about Tseng is, I don’t watch her and say, ‘Wow, she’s the best player on the tour.’ But you see her results and her scores and say, ‘Wow, the rest of the LPGA just can’t play with her.’ Is there such a thing as a stealth dominant player? She’s it.
Farrell Evans, writer-reporter, Sports Illustrated: Yani will best Annika’s 10 majors and rule the tour for the next five to seven years. She’s got power and touch around the green. Paula Creamer, Stacey Lewis, an aging Cristie Kerr, Michelle Wie, Brittany Lang and Ai Miyazato are all contenders, but they don’t have Yani’s finishing power and consistency.
Lipsey: Great point, about the next Tiger. He, er, she, has finally arrived, and funny, isn’t it, nobody’s noticing?
Godich: Nobody’s noticing?
Lipsey: Next week’s SI Golf+ readers won’t know what happened, for example.
Godich: Yes, they will, because GP readers get their news from other sources as well — like PGA Tour Confidential and Golf.com.
Stephanie Wei, contributor, SI Golf+: I don’t think very many people outside of hardcore LPGA fans noticed. I mean, did any of you guys tune in at 9 a.m. Sunday morning?
Lipsey: If a man won his fifth major by age 22 we’d do a commemorative. A woman accomplishes that, and she doesn’t even get the lead story on golf.com. Today’s lead story was the Greenbrier scoreboard. This isn’t a Martha Burk-led rally for equal rights. Just pointing out that women get treated very differently from men, especially in the golfing firmament, as Karen Crouse in the New York Times eloquently outlined in a story this week.
Van Sickle: Women get treated very differently than the men in golf because the levels of interest from the public are very, very different. It’s that simple. The WNBA players don’t get the same salaries as their male counterparts in the NBA, either.
Michael Bamberger, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: The most incredible thing to me is that her putting stroke doesn’t look really conventional — it’s Billy Mayfairish, at times — but it’s so effective. (She’s a Stockton student.) The only thing that could stop her is boredom.
Tell us what you think: How many majors will Yani Tseng win in her career? Who will be her greatest rival?
Tweet