Columnist Ron Kantowski: Stephenson has still got it, and still gets it

Friday, April 15, 2005 | 10:28 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Somewhere deep in my storage shed, amid the burned out Christmas bulbs and electric lawn tools that stopped working a long time ago, there is an old trunk that contains the remnants of my baseball card collection, yellow newspaper clippings chronicling past Indy 500s I have attended, and two posters -- one of Farrah Fawcett-Majors (as she was once known) in a red swimsuit, and one of Jan Stephenson taking a bath in a tub-full of Titleists.

No offense to Natalie Gulbis, the "it" girl on today's LPGA tour, but the calendar that she put out is pretty tame next to the one that put her predecessor atop the cheesecake leader board.

Stephenson, as I discovered Thursday, is still very blonde and still very attractive. As she says proudly, she still gets hit on, and it would upset her if she didn't. But it's hard to believe that golf's original pinup girl is 53 now, a fact that, notwithstanding the number of young but mostly anonymous female touring pros who were pounding the ball around the Las Vegas Country Club during the first round of the LPGA Takefuji Classic, is a reminder that she's not the only one who is getting older.

During her golf prime, Stephenson won 16 LPGA events, three major titles and more than $3 million in earnings. Yet she will always be most remembered for getting everybody all worked up with her interpretation of the Skins Game.

She's still getting everybody all worked up. Only now she is doing it by revealing most of what is on her mind instead of most of what is under her woods covers.

Still plagued by a chronic hand injury, the result of a mugging following a Miami Heat game in 1990, Stephenson last cracked the top 10 in a tour event five years ago. Playing in Las Vegas for the first time since 1999, she shot even-par 72 on Thursday, which isn't too bad considering there are insurance salesmen who have been playing more golf than she has.

She made two bogeys and two birdies. And more important, no new enemies.

That's a hazard that Stephenson hasn't been able to avoid since her comments on what she believes is wrong with the tour were published in the November 2003 edition of Golf Digest. Stephenson was critical of the LPGA's influx of Asian-born players for, in her view, showing little willingness to interact with fans and sponsors, and added that despite being a foreigner herself (she was born in Sydney), she believes 60 percent of the tournament berths should be reserved for Americans.

She also chastised the tour for not promoting sex appeal and LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw for dating Sophie Gustafson, one of the players. She suggested the sexual preference of some of the players has turned potential sponsors away and that Annika Sorenstam, the LPGA's answer to Tiger Woods, is too focused on men's golf to become the face of women's golf.

Stephenson prefaced her remarks by saying "This is probably going to get me in trouble but ... "

Well, she was right.

It's what is said after "but" that usually causes problems, and what Stephenson said, combined with her glamorous image that has always rubbed traditionalists the wrong way, will probably will keep her out of the LPGA Hall of Fame. But it also got Stephenson elected to the Ring of Honor for Athletes Who Usually Have Something Interesting to Say on the first ballot. You'll find her portrait right next to Charles Barkley's.

That said, Stephenson said her comments were taken out of context and that she also had nice things to say about the players and officials she criticized, none of which were published.

And she still feels awful for saying what got all twisted around.

"You have no idea how much I cried over it," a contrite Stephenson said after signing her scorecard Thursday. "I went to see Ty and I couldn't stop crying. I was upset because it came out so wrong."

"I couldn't even play. I played like what, two tournaments (last year). I called (Korean players) Grace Park, I called Se Ri (Pak), and they said they knew I didn't mean it that way."

But after she was through apologizing and accepting a double-bogey in political correctness, there also were those who quietly said that Stephenson only verbalized what others had been thinking. Not long after her remarks, there was a meeting between Votaw and many of the Asian players after which Stephenson said they became noticeably more sociable as a group.

"You know what's gonna happen?" she said with a winsome smile. "(LPGA Hall of Famer) Kathy Whitworth said this to me last week. She said it's going to work out and be the best thing that ever happened. I know I will never get credit for it -- I will always be the bad person who said it -- but it actually will be good for the tour."

I guess once a pioneer, always a pioneer, although in retrospect, Stephenson said this is one trail she wished someone else had blazed.

"I'm used to being controversial," she said. "But that one really hurt my feelings."