Youth as an Excuse to Lose

Play begins today in the 64^th Women's U.S. Open Championship at Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem, Pa. The field includes an astonishing 26 teens; imagine the shock if you read that 26 teens were competing in the Men's U.S. Open or any men's major championship.

The youngest is Cindy Feng of Orlando, Fla., who is only 13. 

Last year's Women's U.S. Open winner was 19-year-old Inbee Park. Her achievement suggests we could see another youthful champion crowned this year.

But should one of these brash youngsters find themselves in contention on Sunday afternoon, their youth would almost certainly serve as a get out of jail free card if they were to fail, as Anthony Kim's did this past weekend at the AT&T National and as Michelle Wie's has numerous times.

A Washington Post headline the day after Tiger Woods dethroned Kim as champion of the AT&T National read: "Tiger Keeps Youth at Bay."

At 24 years old, the same age Kim is now, Woods won golf's Grand Slam by defeating much older competitors Ernie Els and Thomas Bjorn at the 2000 Open Championship. It's unfair to compare Kim to Woods, a man who is a living immortal in the game of golf and has created the loftiest of standards for his competitors. But perhaps we should all rethink classifying Kim's loss as a case of inexperience. Woods is simply better than anyone else we've seen in professional golf since Jack Nicklaus. Every tournament he's won or almost won since the 1997 Masters, when he obliterated the field just months after crossing the threshold of the legal drinking age, has served to reemphasize this point.

A more appropriate headline might be, "Tiger continues to own PGA Tour," or "Red Shirt Diaries: Woods Wins No. 68."

If we set a precedent now, Woods could be spending his time keeping youth at bay until 2026, when Kim will turn 40.

Prior to her 2003 victory in the Women's Amateur Public Links tournament, Michelle Wie played in the final group of the 2003 Kraft Nabisco Championship with Annika Sorenstam and eventual winner Patricia Meunier-Lebouc.

Wie wound up finishing third, and I'm sure the overall sentiment among writers and fellow players was that she would have a handful of major championships by say, 2009. There have been close calls since, but her pairing with Sorenstam may have been Wie's best opportunity to win a major and who knows whether she'll ever win one.

She's not even in the field this week.

While I don't expect a 14-year-old to win the Women's U.S. Open, anyone in contention headed into the final round is obviously good enough to win. Forming your own mental glass ceiling and abandoning hope of winning because of age is absurd. We say it all the time, but it's really just a number.

Sergio Garcia didn't get it done at Medinah in 1999. Justin Rose fell short at the Open Championship in 1998. Wie began her streak of close calls at the Kraft Nabisco in 2003. Woods won by the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes. He's the world's greatest golfer and their all approaching cautionary tale status.

Regardless of age, you can't be afraid to win. If it's not your time, make it your time.

In the August issue of Golf Digest, the Golf Guru completes a thought on an age minimum in pro sports and how it relates to golf by saying, "Life is not a race. Or at least if it is, it's an extremely long one, where the tortoises who work hard for the prize tend to do better than the hares who think they are simply entitled to it."

A word to the young ladies who are competing to almost win at this week's Women's Open; work on your sense of entitlement and defy the odds. Winning when conventional reasoning says you shouldn't isn't about a sense of entitlement, it's about bravado, brash innocence and ignorance to the gravity of the moment. Give youth a chance, not just a spot in tomorrow's headline as a convenient excuse to finish second.

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