PARK: DARREN CARROLL/USGA PHOTO ARCHIVES; WOODS: MIKE EHRMANN/GETTY IMAGES; CHAMBLEE:
SCOTT HALLERAN/GETTY IMAGES; STENSON: RUSSEL KIRK/USGA PHOTO ARCHIVES
VG: Good or bad idea: The PGA of
America is toying with the idea to hold
the PGA Championship outside the
United States, as early as 2020.
JPN: I think it’s a good idea. I think the
PGA Championship has always struggled
a bit to define itself. The U.S. Open is the
national championship of America; the
British Open is the national championship
of the UK; the Masters has its own identity
on the same course every year. The PGA
is not really the championship of the PGA
of America, which is really about the club
pros. The Players Championship and the
World Golf Championships are becoming
more important.
If the PGA Championship can create
a slightly new identity or enhance its
identity by going outside the United States
and becoming a global major somewhere
or another, that would be a positive.
I think it might define it more a little
more internationally and appeal more
to the world than it does today. Right
now it has a certain number of PGA of
America, United States-based club pros
who play in it, which makes it seem a little
more parochial.
VG: Inbee Park fell short in winning the
Grand Slam on the LPGA Tour in 2013,
but her performances seemingly helped
raise awareness of the tour.
JPN: It brought attention to the LPGA
Tour, especially when she was playing for
her fourth consecutive major at the Women’s
British Open. I wish she would have won
that because it would have received even
more play.
I know golf isn’t as popular among women
as it is with men. It’s historical. It’s a fabulous
sport for women. It’s social, it’s about exercise
and it’s competitive—you can play with
men because of the handicap system. I keep
looking for a breakout popular character,
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like Arnold Palmer was in the 1950s or like
Tiger Woods is now, or some incredibly
charismatic woman that could revitalize the
game the way Se Ri Pak did with women’s
golf in Korea.
VG: What’s your take on commentator
Brandel Chamblee giving Tiger an ‘F’ for
2013, partly for the way Woods handled
the rules incident at last year’s Masters?
JPN: My main reaction to that was
disappointment at Tiger’s cold, hard reaction
to it. There’s no reason he couldn’t have
joked about it or laughed about it. He
could have hired somebody to write a funny
remark and the whole thing would have
disappeared. Instead he played hardball. His
agent talked about possible lawsuits.
It’s not what Tiger needs as he tries
to resuscitate his personal reputation as
opposed to his golf reputation. I thought
the way he smiled and kind of laughed
after he got beat at the World Challenge
at Sherwood was great. He lost to Zach
Johnson in the most improbable fashion and
he was able to smile. That’s what we need to
see more of from Tiger.
VG: What was the story of 2013?
JPN: My favorite story of 2013 was Henrik
Stenson. He’s a guy who got way low into
triple digits in the World Golf Ranking and
played in a club championship in Sweden
instead of the British Open in recent years.
He lost most of his money to a scandalous
financial operator. And then to come back
and to play on fire for the second half of
2013 is just a great story about perseverance.
He’s a very unusual kind of funny person and
an eccentric character to boot. To be able to
win both the FedEx Cup and then the Race
to Dubai—that, to me, is the great story of
the past year.
VG: How was your book The Fine Green
Line conceived?
JPN: [Laughs.] By the time I took up golf in
my 30s, I had played maybe 10 or 20 rounds
of golf. No more than that. And somehow
right after I picked it up, within a couple of
years, I became a pretty good golfer. One day
I shot a 69 in my second year playing golf. A
freakish round admittedly, but I just began
to wonder—which every golfer wonders—if
I can do that once, why can’t I do it again?
Why can’t I be as good as the pro player
if I put my mind to it? Many golfers have
that fantasy. I think it’s the core of the golf
addiction, frankly. I thought it would be an
interesting test. I had no illusions that I could
even be as good as a pro player. But I wanted
to experience and explain why you can’t get
better fast—or at all in my case [Laughs.]
As I thought about it, I also wanted
to embed myself—like journalists do in
Army units—with the struggling mini-tour
players. I thought it would be an interesting
narrative. They’re all trying to make it too.
I had written a little about the mini-tours
and it’s a fascinating aspect of golf. Some of
these players sleep in cars. One guy I met
was a stripper at Chippendales. They’re not
at all in the usual image of pro golfers. You
find guys who shoot three rounds of maybe a
67 or 68 and they don’t earn back the money
they put into the event. So there are great
golfers out there but what makes just a few
of them get on the tour, while everybody
else doesn’t quite make it? Put those two
together and you have The Fine Green 1