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According to people who track these things, the most popular language in the world is Mandarin Chinese, followed by English and Spanish.
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| Lorena Ochoa says right now she has 'no intentions' of selecting a PGA Tour invite, but ... (AP) |
The opportunity is there if she wants it.
Ochoa, who has won a record-tying four consecutive events on the LPGA and a blistering five times in her six starts this season, has been offered multiple chances to play in PGA Tour events, but so far has resisted the temptation. In fact, there's a standing offer on the table whenever she's ready, one that pulls at her homeland heartstrings.
The PGA Tour's new Mayakoba Golf Classic, which is staged a few miles north of Cancun, has twice dangled sponsor exemptions in as many years to the female world No. 1 and says the "olive branch" to Mexico's national heroine has no expiration date.
"She's Michael Jordan down here -- bigger than life," Mayakoba tournament director Larson Segerdahl said. "You ask anybody, anywhere, who Lorena Ochoa is and they have an answer for you."
The answer Segerdahl is waiting to hear, from Ochoa herself, is an unequivocal "Si." Last week at the LPGA's Ginn Open, Ochoa said she has been approached by men's events but thus far is content with slaying her foes on the game's top female stage.
"My idea was first to play on the LPGA and dominate here and just try to do my best and achieve my goals," she said last week. "But right now I have no intentions to (accept a men's exemption).
"I think it's completely different. I think there are other things that I could do to improve my game or to have an experience, maybe an exhibition, but not to play on the PGA."
While that doesn't seemingly leave much of an opening, at the rate Ochoa is blowing holes in her LPGA foes, she might want to reconsider when the Mayakoba, a so-called opposite event staged the same week as the mega-money Accenture Match Play Championship, is played for the third time next February.
Moving up a league seems downright logical, since tedium could set in at any moment -- if not for her, then her growing fan base. She's has won her five LPGA starts this year by an average of 7.6 strokes, including a pair by 11. Yeah, a touchdown, field goal and two-point conversion amount to a pretty big deficit in golf.
When Annika Sorenstam played against the boys at Colonial in 2003, it created a three-tiered public-relations boon for her career, the event and the LPGA. Ochoa last year supplanted Sorenstam as No. 1 in the women's rankings, and though the notion of females competing against men has since been relegated to the stuff of desperate publicity stunts (see: Michelle Wie), Ochoa's presence in a field can be justified on a competitive level.
After all, it doesn't get any simpler than this: While Wie never won anything, Ochoa is winning everything, including the past two major championships. It has been 45 years since anybody has won four LPGA events in as many weeks. In terms you average Joes can understand, the last time it happened, in 1963, Tiger Woods was minus-12 years old.
