Silly season has a reason

Adam Candee

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2004 | 10 a.m.

Three Tour Challenge field of competitors

PGA tour: John Daly, Fred Couples, Jay Haas

Champions tour: Tom Kite, Craig Stadler, Peter Jacobsen

LPGA tour: Cristie Kerr,Grace Park, Juli Inkster

The phone rang last week in Juli Inkster's home near the end of her three-week break from the LPGA tour, with Meg Mallon calling to ask for a favor. A call from tour commissioner Ty Votaw was not far behind.

Mallon threw out her back and they wanted Inkster to leave California and her two daughters about a day earlier than planned in order to take Mallon's spot in the Wendy's Three Tour Challenge at Reflection Bay Golf Club. The timing, believe or not, proved perfect for Inkster.

Already scheduled to head to Alabama for the first of two year-ending LPGA events, Inkster agreed to detour to Las Vegas for a couple of days for the first stop in golf's so-called "silly season" in the winter months.

Was it an inconvenience to add in another semi-competitive round after nearly eight consecutive months of tournament golf? Not for 44-year-old Inkster, and not for most of the pros from the LPGA, PGA tour and Champions tour who played Tuesday in an event scheduled to be aired Dec. 18-19 on ABC.

"I'm kind of looking forward to playing the next couple of weeks, and then I have two and a half months off," Inkster said. "So it's pretty good."

While family and vacation time rule the time from when leaves fall until the holidays pass, many players go stir crazy without some competition. They found some at Lake Las Vegas, where the nine players from different tours (three from each) vied for bragging rights and their share of the $900,000 purse.

The Sun cannot publish the results because of the ABC contract protecting them until the airdate, though it is safe to report a tight round settled by just a few dollars that kept the friendly golf a little bit competitive. It also scratched an itch for Inkster that went beyond helping her friend in a pinch.

"We don't get to play against the men that much, so it's good to let them know that we can play," Inkster said. "And I know they know that. They're phenomenal players. For us, it was a good day."

Tom Kite, 54, represented the Champions tour after spending parts of three decades on the PGA tour grinding from week to week even before the advent of huge dollars. Keeping fresh is a priority, he said.

"It's a fairly long offseason and a lot of guys take some weeks off during the season so they can pace themselves for the tournaments they really want to play well," Kite said. "All of a sudden, you get two months away from golf. A lot of guys feel like it's a little bit too much."

The "silly season" of unofficial money -- lots of it -- and made-for-TV events with guaranteed paydays for big stars runs through most of November and December. The PGA tour Web site lists nine such tournaments with purses totaling $22.35 million, for those invited and willing to make a sacrifice of rare vacation time that could mean spending Thanksgiving in Korea.

Golfers play longer seasons than just about all other professional athletes, with PGA tour standouts able to play nearly all 52 weeks of the year. It's a matter of both talent and choice, of which the LPGA's Grace Park is exercising both in her personal version of a silly season.

Park finished a tournament in Japan on Sunday afternoon and flew to Las Vegas for a two-day stop on her way to Alabama and, the next week, Florida. Park, 25, began this brutal stretch of nearly two months in October in South Carolina, making her way west across the country to California before flying more than 13 hours across the Pacific Ocean to her native Korea for a tournament that preceded Japan.

By the time she is done, Park will have covered almost 16,000 miles in the air, earning a well-deserved break until the LPGA season starts again in March.

"It is (hard), but then, it's always a privilege playing in these events," Park said. "It's also a lot of fun and I learn so much from it. I enjoy playing in these, so any chance I get, I try to fit into it."

"I've been pushing it lately, just playing a lot. But I think I can hang in there. I've got two more events and I think I can hang in there."