Golf stories worth telling

VIENNA -- I know I've been reserved this week.
(Pause for laughter.)
All I can say is, sometimes you see controversy coming, and sometimes controversy finds you. And sometimes, an LPGA golfer (Dale Eggeling, for instance) barges into the media room and decides to give you a piece of her mind.
Well, as you may have guessed, that happened to me this week. And all I can say is, I didn't see it coming. (Really.)
Anyway, I might as well pass on the story.
Painful process
Eggeling -- who is a nice woman and a good golfer, by the way -- didn't like something I wrote earlier in the week and she certainly let me know in rather clear terms. I won't say exactly what she wanted to do to me, but let me put it this way: Eggeling owns horses. There's a certain operation that horses undergo that severely hampers their reproductive abilities. Eggeling wanted me to undergo that operation.
Five minutes later, she came back and apologized, admitting she hadn't read my entire story and that it wasn't as bad as she first thought. I thought that was pretty nice of her, and I told her that I thought her criticism of the story was fair, even if I didn't agree with her.
After that, all the players forgot about the story and it never came up again.
(Pause for laughter.)
OK, it may have come up again once or twice, but I'm sure everyone will forget it. Eventually. And it certainly wasn't the first time an area reporter has clashed with a golfer in the tournament's 15 years.
Back in 1992 (way before my time, obviously), Dottie Pepper (then Dottie Mochrie) missed the cut at the Jamie Farr Classic the weekend before the tournament and came early to Squaw Creek. Since nothing else was happening, a crowd of reporters gathered around Pepper for an interview. One reporter asked her what it was like to have her husband caddie for her.
"My husband is not a caddie," Pepper said. "He's a Class A professional and my instructor."
The reporter answered: "If he carries your bag, he's your caddie."
Needless to say, Pepper didn't think it was funny. And, needless to say, the interview was over.
Another famous Pepper story came when she hit an errant shot and it was headed out of bounds. Pepper, not wanting the ball to go too far, started yelling, "Hit someone! Hit someone!"
And, of course, there was the time Kim Williams got shot. (FYI: She doesn't like to talk about that.)
On the funny side
Not all the stories are controversial. Some are just funny or unusual.
Like the time when Ayako Okamoto was playing in the 1990 tournament and the round was delayed by rain. (At this tournament? Imagine that.) She marked her ball with a Japanese coin. When she came back the next day, it had been replaced with an American quarter.
Or in 1990, when Patty Sheehan hit a ball into a paper cup behind the green on the eighth hole and had to take a drop. When she dropped the ball, it rolled back several feet, setting up a tough shot. She bogeyed the hole and finished tied with Beth Daniel at the end of the round. Daniel then won the playoff.
And, of course, there is the story (or, more accurately, stories) that I've become famous for: Asking Natalie Gulbis to marry me.
I didn't really know who she was before I covered last year's tournament, but I was thinking of doing a story on how some golfers were using their looks to draw new fans.
So I figured, why stop there?
For the record, she was very nice both times. (She also said no both times, so she wasn't as nice as she could have been.) I figured it might have been the last time I had the chance to do something like that, so I did.
Hey, you're only young once.
On better behavior
Still, at next year's tournament -- if there is one -- I promise to behave myself more and be a little less controversial.
And I do hope the tournament comes back. It's a fun event to cover (usually) and I think it's great for the area. And even though some of the players have been mad at me this week, they've always stayed professional.
I'm sure most of them will forget about me soon enough.
(But if I see Eggeling again, I'm running for the exit.)
XJoe Scalzo is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write him at scalzo@vindy.com.