Jan remains fan favorite

MOUNT PLEASANT — When Annika Sorenstam announced a couple of weeks ago that she was stepping away from competitive golf at the end of the year, the remaining events of the 2008 LPGA season was seen as Sorenstam's farewell tour.

In her own way, Jan Stephenson, an LPGA star of yesteryear, is also engaging in her own farewell tour. Stephenson, who won 16 titles between 1974 and 1987, including three major championships, has become a victim of the LPGA's youth movement.

The category under which Stephenson now competes will be eliminated after this season. So Stephenson, 56, decided she'd better enjoy the opportunity while it was still available.

"I would always like that chance to go play," said Stephenson, who for the past two years has spent more time developing her golf course design business. "I still love to hit balls. I'm always videotaping. I figured I better do it now before they change the rule or I won't ever have a chance."

Stephenson, who has missed the cut in two tournaments prior to this week's Ginn Tribute Hosted by Annika, said it has been a lot of fun.

"People come up and say it's so nice to see you again," she said. "I'm really appreciating that. Every volunteer, I've tried to say 'Good morning' and 'Hello.' Who knows if I'll ever get to come back."

While there is a generation that knows and loves Stephenson, she admits there also are plenty who don't know who she is, even in the sanctuary of the locker room.

"When I walk into the locker room I have to have my credentials because they'll say 'Lady members are not allowed in here.' I get stopped at the gate and they'll say 'This is for players only.' It's embarrassing. Nobody has any idea who I am," she said.

"Many of those players weren't born when I was doing well," said Stephenson, who was the LPGA's pinup girl when Natalie Gulbis was still in diapers. "I won a tournament the year Karrie Webb was born (1974) and she feels like she's a veteran. These girls are so young. It's a young sport and that's why they're taking that category away."

In 1986, her sponsor, Maxfli, asked Stephenson to pose in a tub filled with strategically placed golf balls. The LPGA commissioner also encouraged her to do the photo shoot.

"They had a warehouse full of golf balls they wanted to get rid of and they decided they would give a calendar away with a dozen balls," she said. "They ended up having to make more balls. They went through like 250,000, so they were really happy."

Stephenson said she wasn't paid anything because she was under contract. She was approached by Playboy to pose but turned them down. Asked if she would do it today, Stephenson said she goes back and forth.

"I would probably not do it because I feel like it would take away from my game," Stephenson said, adding that in the end she felt the move cost her several tournament victories because she was so tired from doing the promotional work.

Stephenson's former father-in-law was president of Landmark Land, and through that association she became friends with Pete and Alice Dye. She learned golf course design from them and has studied at the University of Georgia.

"I'm a tomboy," she said, adding that she likes to get dirt under her fingernails.

She's done six total, and is in the process of getting courses permitted in Costa Rica and California. And it's not a ceremonial design, either. She's onsite "twice as many times as you would think." Her fee is "500 grand. I'm half the price of everybody else."

As much as she enjoys the design business, though, the competition still pulls her. She'd like to see the LPGA support a version of the PGA Tour's Champions Tour.

"When you talk about Pat Bradley, Nancy Lopez and Patty Sheehan, we all want to compete," she said.

"We have a few legends tournaments. I would like to see the LPGA support the legends more, not so much for me but for the Patty Sheehans, Pat Bradleys and Joanne Carners."