All Atwitter: Golf Digest Woman: Golf Digest

All Atwitter

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 Comments

Call me old-fashioned, but I didn't own a cell phone until the 21st century. Now that I do, I text message in full sentences, not in prepubescent shorthand. I take great pride in the fact that I don't have a facebook page. I've never visited MySpace.com. Friends, editors and colleagues have tried to make me (when you write blogs such as these and the one I did for Golf For Women for years, the networking sites help drum up traffic), but I've refused to take part in any of it. So naturally, when everybody and their grandmother started twittering, I was a staunch opponent. I simply cannot tell you how despicable I found the thought of logging on to a website to read about random people's parking woes and tooth-brushing schedules.

Then along came Stewart Cink. And John Daly. And Christina Kim. And most inexplicably of all, Dan Jenkins. They changed my mind. Following Jenkins on twitter during a major is better than reading any Jenkins prose that's ever been published in a magazine or hardcover. It almost calls for popcorn. Kim is hilarious, frequent and uncensored. Cink is more candid on twitter than in interviews. Daly is hard to understand but replies to what must be close to every last twitter comment he gets. Natalie Gulbis posts pictures of everything she does.

Twitter gives insight into the players' personalities and lives unlike anything ever has before. I never knew that when possible, the LPGA Tour players send their luggage by truck while they fly to the next tour stop, just to prevent losing precious clubs and Manolo Blahnik shoes. I never knew that hours of bus riding was involved in getting players from the Evian Masters to the Ricoh Women's British Open. And I sure as heck never pictured major champion Cink using a Pampered Chef garlic press while making mashed potatoes. Thanks to twitter, I've been enlightened. (Though I still wonder what Michelle Wie means when she randomly ends tweets with "DO WORK!", as she frequently tends to.)

Stewart Cink's TwitPic of the Top Ten List manuscript he was given before his appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman July 21st. Photo by Stewart Cink/yfrog.

As much as I hate to admit it, I've become completely hooked. The posts don't even have to be that interesting. I go to Annika Sorenstam's twitter page every day, and the juiciest details she ever gives up are her dinner menu.

I have yet to start a twitter account of my own. But if I ever go that far, I guarantee I'll at least compose full sentences and refrain from all the "c u l8r" stuff. I have to draw the line somewhere.

--Stina Sternberg