Alena Sharp Blog: "Talk Show"- April Entry

April Blog - Talk Show

I am sure many of you wonder: "What do you talk about with other golfers during play?"

Golf is different from most sports in that after you tee off, you spend the next two minutes walking to your next shot and have a friendly converstation with the person you are trying to beat. A lot of golfers on tour are sports buffs. When I am paired with a friend we talk about a lot of different topics. One of them is sports - especially hockey. I sigh when I talk about my Maple Leafs but hopefully the 2008-2009 season will give me more to talk about. The most recent topic of conversation was March Madness. I really don't follow basketball that much but after hearing caddies and players talk about the brackets I learned a little about it in the past month. Like myself, most of the players played NCAA college golf and automatically have to cheer for the school they graduated from.

In the last two tournaments I have gotten to play with Hall of Famer and friend Juli Inkster. She is one of my favourite players on tour so when I saw that I was paired with her I was excited. It is always fun playing with Juli. She is into hockey and basketball so we had conversations about her San Jose Sharks and my Leafs and she is a Stanford fan so she was cheering for the Stanford women's team to win the Ladies NCAA Championship.

My caddy Tara and I have different conversations on the course all the time. Some are about golf but most of the time we try not to talk about golf. We talk about current events, tour gossip, sports and we people watch. She likes to look up local interest points and talk about them. Some weeks she like to look up useless, funny facts that she can say all week. Like, if you shave a Tiger, do they still have stripes?

Of course, as a women, and I hate to admit it, but sometimes there is just flat out gossipping going on. From topics of drug testing, to tee times, to what players wear, player agents, and how some players have special privileges and can "massage" some of the tours rules.

We are normal people just like everyone else. Sometimes what we as golfers think is a bad day, is not so bad indeed. A great story that my Hawaii billet family told me was that she was driving a certain golfer to the airport after a PGA Tour event and the player was in a very bad mood and complained about everything. She turned to him and said; "It's January and you are in Hawaii...you get to play golf, a game you love, for a living and you make pretty good money. So maybe you should stop being so negative and look at the brighter side of things." His response was: "How would you feel if you just shot 79?" She looked right back at him and said: "Well sir, I would be ecstatic". He sat there for a moment and laughed, realizing that things were not as bad as he first thought.

Till next time,
Alena

**Alena currently sits in 42nd position on the LPGA Tour Money List with $70, 348 in earnings through 8 events**