Creamer-Sorenstam Implications

The Paula Creamer-Annika Sorrenstam spat at last week's Championship may tell us a lot about the state of the LPGA Tour under new Commissioner Carolyn Bivens.

Just a quick recap courtesy of AP:

The season-ending ADT Championship got off to a rocky start Thursday when the top two players on the LPGA Tour got into a tense dispute on the 18th fairway over where Sorenstam should have taken a drop from the hazard.

"Neither one of them was going to budge," rules official Janet Lindsay said.

After a debate that lasted so long it was almost too dark to finish at Trump International, the ruling ultimately went Sorenstam's way. She was allowed to go to a ball drop instead of returning to the tee, although she still made double bogey and fell out of a tie for the lead.

Hee-Won Han led with a 5-under-par 67 that essentially went unnoticed.

This round might be remembered as the start of a rivalry between the LPGA Tour's best players — one the undisputed star who already is in the Hall of Fame, the other a 19-year-old rookie with moxie.

"We were trying to determine where it went in," Sorenstam said. "We're standing 220 yards away, and we're talking about inches."

Creamer, who finished with a 68, stared hard at Sorenstam as the Swede spoke to reporters, and later had an animated discussion with LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens and Lindsay.

It would be interesting to hear what the animated discussion is about. It's hard to imagine that Creamer would be so insistent unless she believed Sorenstam was bending the rules.

Since the LPGA's firing of 18-year official Barb Trammell (who reportedly lost her job after she would not budge when a player wanted to belatedly enter an event after the standard entry deadline), the LPGA Tour has seen two high profile rules incidents since her departure. Neither of which was handled very well.

Golfweek's Jay Coffin reported that Trammell's "resignation" may have been motivatd by "a group of players who had made known to Bivens their increasing displeasure with Trammell's 'by the book' demeanor."

Just typing out loud here, but someone might want to tell Bivens that respect for the rules is vital to the integrity and image of a pro golf tour.