Columnist Dean Juipe: By dating a player, commish puts himself in curious spot

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, April 15, 2003 | 10:06 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's a commonly held belief that mixing business with pleasure is a risky proposition.

In fact it's so fraught with peril that warnings, in the form of old sayings, abound. "Don't fish off the company pier" and stuff like that.

In Las Vegas, most of the major casinos have a policy that prevents men and women involved in a relationship from working side by side, at least at the management level.

So when the commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour takes up with an LPGA player, it's news. And when there's a fairly large discrepancy in their backgrounds, it's curious, too.

Ty Votaw and Sophie Gustafson are a pair, an item, these days. And, uncomfortable with it or not, if I'd have seen either one Monday during my visit to the Las Vegas Country Club I would have at least made a token effort to pry into their private lives.

But I was led to believe they won't be in until today, not that either one is apt to publicly address the subject of the other. They have to figure the less said, the better.

Yet it's a questionable practice, isn't it, for the commissioner to be dating a player? It isn't so much that he'll be drawn into a conflict of interest or have to make a ruling in which Gustafson is involved, it's more a case of it being a matter of perception.

Votaw is 41 and a divorced father of two.

Gustafson is 29 and a five-year veteran of the tour who has won three times and accumulated some $1.6 million in earnings. She presently stands at No. 23 on the 2003 money list with $60,910 heading into the Takefuji Classic, which opens Thursday at the Country Club.

She's from Sweden, he's from Orlando.

She's tall, average looking and corresponds mostly by e-mail. He's short but suave, a sharp-looking lawyer who began working for the tour in 1991 and who became its commissioner in March 1999.

He doesn't see anything wrong with dating a player, yet some of the players obviously do. "Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but this is inappropriate," tour veteran Sherri Turner has been quoted as saying.

Even before Votaw and Gustafson hooked up last fall, the commissioner wasn't on the best of terms with the bulk of his players. In a Sports Illustrated poll of 105 LPGA members taken in August, the question was phrased "Do you think Votaw is doing a good job?" and only 21 responded "Yes."

As the story goes, Votaw got involved with Gustafson when he tried to arbitrate a dispute (concerning a bonus) between the player and her former caddie/boyfriend, Chuck Hoersch. Shortly thereafter, Gustafson traded in the bag boy for the boss.

Votaw's divorce from his wife, Paula, became official March 11. She's an executive with International Speedway Corp. in Daytona Beach, so she knows a little something about guys getting out of control when their motor's running hot.

All of this is harmless, of course. Votaw and Gustafson can do as they please and it shouldn't mean anything to any of us.

But it's a big world out there and you would think a man of his means could have found someone who wasn't an underling to socialize with, even if there's a precedent he can use in his own defense. It turns out the commissioner of the Association of Volleyball Professionals, Leonard Armafo, is married to one of that league's star players, Holly McPeak.

If this is a trend that's developing we can only hope Bud Selig doesn't have his eye on Mike Piazza.