With Park aiming for historic feat, world not watching

Christine Brennan | USA TODAY Sports

Something that has never happened in the history of sports could occur this weekend, yet almost no one knows anything about it.

South Korea's Inbee Park is trying to become the first player ever – male or female – to win four professional major golf championships in a single season. Park has won the first three women's majors this year, and if she were to win the British Open at St. Andrews on Sunday, she would win the Grand Slam of golf, something players such as Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Annika Sorenstam have never done.

But don't tell anyone. It's a secret. Actually, it's not a secret, but the international sports media sure is treating it like it is.

"It's unbelievable," Sorenstam said in a phone interview earlier this week. "This hasn't been discussed enough and covered enough. It's mind-boggling why it hasn't caught on."

How is it possible in our sports-crazed, record-obsessed culture that a quest of this magnitude could fly so under the radar, even if it is women's golf, not men's, and a South Korean athlete, not an American?

Perhaps LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan said it best over the phone from the United Kingdom: "For the casual fan, stumbling across the Inbee Park story takes work."

Almost all of the LPGA's tournaments are on the Golf Channel, which is great if you're a golf fan, not so great if you're not. Reaching the people who wouldn't necessarily turn on golf but would care about a historic pursuit such as Park's becomes all the more difficult as many niche sports tend to cater to their core audience on specific channels. (This week, the British Open is on ESPN2.)

The depth and skill in the women's game has never been better, yet, ironically enough, it also has never received less attention in our culture. Living in the Tiger era really hurts; Woods tends to block out the sun for anything else in golf, with TV ratings when he plays twice what they are when he doesn't. The print and online media tend to follow that trend.

For an American audience, it doesn't help that the athlete in question isn't an American. It would be wonderful if this weren't so, but nationalism is a powerful force in sports, and likely always will be.

"Many Americans seem to be overwhelmed as golf fans with the extraordinary success of South Korean women golfers," said Richard Lapchick, chairman of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida. "Greatness is greatness and should be treated that way by the fans and the media."

David M. Carter, executive director of the University of Southern California's Marshall Sports Business Institute, says "nationalism plays a role given the lack of consistent American star power throughout the LPGA, and you are left with a sport – and a budding superstar – struggling for attention and notoriety beyond the LPGA's core fan base."

Park speaks English and is well-liked on tour, but not necessarily well-known. "She is very sweet, does everything that is asked to be done and is also very normal," Sorenstam said. "Sometimes normal doesn't bring out excitement, although this is not normal what she's attempting to do."

"She's a quiet kid and she kind of came flying out of nowhere," Whan said. "Had it been (U.S. golfers) Paula Creamer or Stacy Lewis (the 2012 player of the year), players people know, it would have been an easier story for the media to jump on board."

LPGA golfers weren't always so ignored by the mainstream sports media. In 1978, in her first full season on tour, 21-year-old Nancy Lopez won five tournaments in a row, captured the imagination of the nation and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

In 2003, when Sorenstam played in the PGA Tour's Colonial tournament, her score was displayed live on CNBC as if it were the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The next year, 14-year-old Michelle Wie also was a big television draw when she nearly made the cut in a PGA Tour event, missing by a stroke.

Park deserves the same kind of attention, even if there is no way she'll get it. "This is what sports are all about," Sorenstam said. "I don't care what sport it is. It's why we watch and love sports, to see something like this that we might never see again."