Sorenstam Fails to Wow Sports World

She is already sky high, and beginning today, when she begins playing the U.S. Women’s Open, Annika Sorenstam will discover how success looks at 5,280 feet. At Cherry Hills Country Club in the suburbs, Sorenstam will set out to win her third major championship of the year and keep alive her goal of winning all four, something no woman has done.

So why isn’t there any more buzz?

If Tiger Woods were on this kind of mission, they would be naming streets, candy bars, schools and babies after him. But even though Sorenstam’s extraordinary exploits have elevated her level of attention in most parts of the golf world, she’s simply not cutting it in the forum of public acclaim.

For some reason, she’s failing at the Wow Factor.

Maybe that will change this week as the Open and Sorenstam’s quest unfold on the leafy course in Cherry Hills Village. And maybe it won’t.

It probably would help to remember Sorenstam’s initial detour from the safe and small world of women’s professional golf and her plunge into the social mainstream, when she played the Colonial tournament on the men’s PGA Tour in 2003.

Even though Sorenstam was the undisputed heavyweight champion, the rock star of the LPGA and the most dominant player in women’s golf, she had to play against the men to take a turn in a spotlight that should have been pointed in her direction for years.

You get no points for peevishness, but Ty Votaw, the outgoing LPGA commissioner, couldn’t stop himself from saying that something was really out of whack there.

Certainly, if the network covering the U.S. Open this week has anything to do with it, then NBC is going to pump some air into this thing. During its telecast of Sunday’s fourth round of the men’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst, the network broke away for a live interview with Sorenstam, sitting on the sun-splashed deck of her home in Incline Village, Nev.

The catch may be that ratings aren’t necessarily going to soar, no matter how relentlessly NBC chases the Sorenstam story.

You can’t force people to watch. You can’t force the Wow Factor -- it’s either there or it isn’t.

If Sorenstam and her drive to win the Grand Slam are falling short of where they should be, there must be some explanation. Here are a few possibilities:

* It’s women’s golf.

Meaning, it’s not men’s golf and the LPGA is not the PGA Tour. The television audience for the PGA Tour doesn’t necessarily cross over and watch the LPGA, at least in the same numbers, and that’s a drawback. The PGA Tour has the best players in the world. The LPGA has the best female players in the world.

And although it’s unfair to compare the two tours, they’re still competing for sponsors’ dollars and they’re both in the entertainment business.

* Sorenstam isn’t flashy.

Well, she’s not Tiger, but it’s hard to argue with someone who has won 31 times, six of them majors, since the start of 2002. What’s not flashy about that? At the same time, she could loosen up some when the cameras are rolling. Her last network TV appearance, on Sunday with Bob Costas, was about a dozen 20-second answers devoid of snap.

She’s a lot like Woods, who has it over everyone with his megawatt smile, but isn’t generally revealing, even though he’s cooperative. In fact, she has been studying Woods’ approach to interviews.

* Bad scheduling.

So the U.S. Open is this week and the last major was when? Two weeks ago. This is a huge problem because there is no buildup.

Not having enough time between such important events shortchanges Sorenstam and the LPGA, and this scheduling quirk must be corrected.

* Sorenstam is too dominant.

This isn’t exactly Sorenstam’s fault either, but it’s a perception, just as it was with Woods when he steamrollered his way through the 1999 and 2000 seasons.

Add up all the pieces of information and see what you have -- a somewhat underappreciated superstar in the prime of her career trying to climb to unprecedented heights. If that’s not a great plot line, then the situation is a lot worse than anyone knew.

So here’s another view: Sorenstam could be the best female golfer of all time, she is the picture of greatness, and when she tees it up today at the U.S. Open the best advice would be to keep an eye on her because you wouldn’t want to miss it.

You might even say, “Wow.”