Columnist Adam Candee: 13 years later, 1st win is sweet

Adam Candee

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 | 9:50 a.m.

Adam Candee covers golf for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at candee@lasvegassun.com.

This week's pro: Don Callahan, Butch Harmon School of Golf

Before you swing the golf club, you must set up to swing the golf club.

Sure, it may sound simple, and it is. But many golfers may set up improperly for a shot without having any idea that they are doing so.

In four decades of teaching golf, Don Callahan cannot remember a truly good golfer who did not exhibit excellent posture in setting up for his or her shot.

In advocating for "athletic posture," Callahan offers a number of checkpoints for you to look for in getting ready for your shot. Atop the list is flattening your back as much as possible.

"Get the roundness out of your back," Callahan said.

Along that same line, try to push out your tailbone. Also, try to push out your chest while holding back your shoulders. Raise up your chin as well. All of these tips will help you to properly align your upper body to get the most out of your swing.

To further set yourself, bend from the waist and flex your knees only minimally. You should feel your weight balanced more toward the balls of your feet, rather than toward your heels. Callahan loosely compares the entire feeling to a triple threat position in basketball.

At best, failure is subjective in golf. At worst, it is absolutely maddening.

So in one light, Kim Saiki has earned more than $1.6 million in her 13 years on the LPGA Tour and that sounds like success in just about any line of work. Yet in that other light, Saiki, a wonderfully talented player who lives in Las Vegas, inexplicably failed in her first 276 attempts to win a tournament on tour.

There is no more need for the Dr. Phil talk, though, because Saiki claimed her first-ever professional victory Sunday at the Wegmans Rochester LPGA in upstate New York. She held off Rosie Jones in a final-round battle to earn $225,000 and shoot up to 14th on the money list for 2004.

Finally breaking through to win on tour is a huge relief for Saiki, according to one of the people who knows her best. Three years ago, Saiki came to instructor Greg LaBelle at the Butch Harmon School of Golf at one of the lowest points of her career.

Her 2001 season cut short because of an inner-ear infection that caused vertigo symptoms, Saiki made only three cuts in 15 tries and earned just more than $10,000 that year. It marked her fifth straight year of declining earnings.

"She was really kind of looking for some glimmer of hope to get back into it," LaBelle said.

They worked on her swing, but they also focused on the mental aspect of winning and simply staying in contention week after week.

"It's really no different winning than it is being there every week," LaBelle said.

For all her success over a decade, Saiki had never parlayed good first and second rounds into weekend success. She finished second four times, but the last of those had come in 1998. Even with her cool demeanor on the outside, Saiki burned inside for a trophy.

"Definitely," LaBelle said. "Especially for her caliber of player as a junior and an amateur, this was really the only level of golf she'd never won on."

She put together the best of her skills for four rounds in Rochester, putting well to complement overall good work driving the ball. Saiki survived an early double-bogey in Sunday's round and came back to record three birdies on the back nine, but she really solidified her win with a long par-saving putt at No. 15 that broke Jones' momentum after she birdied the same hole.

"That was the best thing right there," LaBelle said.

Saiki, 38, spent time with LaBelle just a week before her win at Rochester, tuning up her swing after spending the previous seven weeks on the road. She spoke to LaBelle on Sunday night after her victory, but there was no loud music or party to be heard in the background. Saiki was driving from Rochester to this week's U.S. Women's Open in the Boston area.

"I'm hoping she gets her second win this week," LaBelle said with a laugh.

But it was no joke -- LaBelle feels that Saiki's long drives, accurate putts, and shot-shaping ability are perfectly suited to any USGA championship.

"She's always been a great player," LaBelle said. "She's always been able to do pretty much anything she wanted to with the golf ball."

That kind of praise no longer has to suffice for Saiki, who can point to her trophy as a small measure of validation.

"It was incredible," Saiki told the Associated Press after her win. "No words could describe it. Chills!"

The recent escalation in the spat between Tiger Woods and Harmon found its way onto the walls of the coach's Henderson facility in a humorous way on Tuesday.

An unidentified assailant, who is likely to remain that way, used a roll of thin black tape to cover the eyes on four large pictures of Woods that hang in the front office of the school. A number of other photos of the world's top-ranked player went unharmed.

We can safely exclude Harmon as a suspect because he is away on vacation.

Woods and Harmon parted ways in 2002, and Woods has not won a major since then. In recent weeks, Harmon has said that Woods is getting away from his old practice habits and confidence.

"Tiger Woods is not playing well, he is not working on the right things in his golf swing although obviously Tiger thinks he is," Harmon recently told Sky Sports.

About the U.S. Open, Harmon said, "He should have felt, I could win this tournament by six, seven, eight shots. That was the old Tiger Woods."

"But for him to stand there at every one of his interviews and say 'I am close, I feel really good about what I am doing,' I think it might be a bit of denial."