Tees And Teens

An old scribe covers an LPGA event in 2009 and discovers a whole new world

By Dan Jenkins

Illustration By Cathy Hull

September 2, 2005

Ask me if I've ever read one of those advice columns for teens in the newspapers, and I'll say, yeah, sure, all the time, don't I look like I have an eating disorder? Don't I look like I need help trying to find the mall? And, hey—it's 2009 and I think after 50 years I've pretty much figured out how to deal with my parents, OK?

On the other hand, I wasn't about to pass up a chance to cover the Emily Turner Clambake. After all, it was the year's first major. Emily Turner, in case you don't know, is the woman who influences the lives of so many young girls in her syndicated column, Babbling with Emily, and on her popular daytime TV show by the same name.

Like if a teen babe wants to know where to buy a pair of cheap chandelier earrings, she asks Emily. Or if a teen babe wants to know where to find that new video game where she can rescue her platoon from the Taliban, she asks Emily.

Emily Turner knows all kinds of things about life, of course, and for the past five years she's been dipping into golf.

I'd never met Emily, but I introduced myself to her when I arrived at Rancho Trusto Fundo Country Club the day before the tournament started.

Rancho Trusto Fundo is carved out of the melted cheese, chili con carne and chopped taco salad of a California area only an hour and a half from La Jolla and San Diego.

It's the toughest course Pete Dye, Tom Fazio and Jack Nicklaus ever collaborated on. Yeah, tougher, I think, than Piranha Nibbles, the course they designed on the banks of the Amazon in a part of the Brazilian jungle that can only be reached by paddle boat.

I might add that Rancho Trusto Fundo is woven through a residential area where the homes all look like two Merions and three Winged Foots have been added onto the Oakland Hills clubhouse.

The hills are alive with the sound of money, if you get my meaning, not to write a Broadway musical about it.

But it's sort of a fun place. When you're not playing the golf course, you can sit on the clubhouse terrace and watch the daily swarms of illegal immigrants go romping happily across the hills and valleys in their quaint regional costumes.

I found Emily Turner to be a trim, bouncy little thing. She's somewhere between the age of 55 and 82—it depends on which side of her most recent facelift you're standing on. I wanted to ask if those were her own eyebrows creeping up her forehead, but thought better of it.

You've seen women whose facelifts have left them looking surprised. Emily looks permanently startled.

Right away, she invited me to join her for an adult beverage in the Teen Vogue hospitality tent.

We clinked highball glasses, and I informed her that I actually preferred watching teen babes play golf these days. I said, "There's something about a young ponytail that can blow it out there 320 off the tee—uphill, into the wind."

She looked pleased, although she seemed preoccupied with adjusting the hearing aid in her right ear.

I explained to her how it came about that grown-ups had driven me to covering teen golf. Forced me to resign from Rampant Instruction, the largest selling golf monthly, and take a job writing for Divots and Shopping, the successful golf weekly, the magazine that's devoted to curing your slice and presenting full-page ads for thong underwear.

I said I'd finally grown tired of having an IMG agent tell me to make an appointment if I wanted to talk to his billionaire client. Some college dropout who didn't know how to do anything but hit a golf ball and would have trouble finding a real job outside of lawn care.

The last time it happened to me was on the veranda at Augusta this past spring. I was standing there trying to have a conversation with this player, Sluggo Simpo, I'll call him, and his agent, Kaiser Wilhelm.

But no matter what I said, Sluggo and the agent only looked at me like I was supposed to be sacking their groceries.

Then Kaiser Wilhelm said if I wanted an interview with Sluggo I should call him, the agent, not the player, and make an appointment.

I said, "Can I ask one question first?"

The agent frowned.

"Does the dummy talk?" I said.

Nothing. Blank faces. Both of them.

That's when I said to the agent, "Tell you what. Rather than you, I think I'll call and make an appointment with a brain surgeon and see if I can have your client's name cut out." And walked away. That was it for dealing with the guys.