Nancy Lopez' "Comeback"

A couple of days ago at Waggle Room, Bill Jempty linked to a post at ESPN which details Nancy Lopez' plan to play about a third of the LPGA schedule by the 2011 season.

I have very little problem with Nancy Lopez making another "comeback", assuming she can be somewhat competitive.  I use quotes because she never really retired.  Up until the current season, she's played at least one event every year dating back to 1974.  I say "another" because Lopez attempted a brief "comeback" schedule just two years ago, playing six times in 2007 with less than competitive results.

What I would have a problem with would be this scenario - Nancy makes it into 8-10 events and fails to make a single cut like in ‘07.  Entry slots in LPGA events are too precious to waste on a misguided comeback attempt, no matter how popular that player was or still is.  Right now, Lopez effectively has priority position #171 (officially #175 but the four players immediately in front of her haven't been talking to the media about making their own comebacks).  This means that every time Nancy enters an event and makes the field aside from a sponsor's invitation, she takes a position from a player behind her, like Michelle McGann or Becky Iverson or Samantha Richdale or Kim Welch - players who would play almost every week if there were enough tournament slots to accommodate them.  And every week those players can't make the field makes it even tougher for them to earn money and move up the priority list.

I suppose I shouldn't single out Nancy Lopez here.  Jan Stephenson decided to play Corning this week, just posted a 77 in Round One and will be heading out the door sometime late tomorrow afternoon.  At least Stephenson has made a couple of cuts in the last four years.  I'm pretty sure Young-A Yang would have preferred that Jan not show up for the final Corning event, but them's the breaks.  Some might say Michelle McGann and Cindy Rarick should hang it up as well - I'm not nearly ready to make that declaration yet.

In my lifetime of following different sports, I've occasionally gotten irritated with players who don't know when to call it a career.  I'm not talking about the Brett Favre example of "is he retiring or isn't he" (irritating as it may be).  Favre can still play at a reasonable level.  I'm talking about 44-year-old Pete Rose hitting .219 with no power at first base for a team which would have been playing a young power hitter named Nick Esasky had Rose not also been the manager.   I'm talking about a player who insists they can still perform when it is obvious to anybody who looks twice at the data (and should be obvious to themselves) that they can't.  In Rose's case and to a lesser extent in Lopez', their choices to press on are a detriment to his teammates and her colleagues.  Ultimately it is the player's decision as to whether they want to add a few more chapters to their biography.  Too many times, those last chapters make for a very sad ending.