At 15, Thompson looks ready for big time
Nicholas Thompson has played 121 events on the PGA Tour and is closing in on $4 million in prize money won in the five years since he left Georgia Tech.
Yet, incredibly, he’s not a sure thing to beat his little sister on the golf course.
“Sure, she’s beaten Nick,” says celebrated swing instructor Jim McLean, who teaches the Miami area prodigy, Alexis Thompson.
“He knows he has to play good to beat her.”
More impressive is the fact that Lexi Thompson, who drives the ball 280 yards, plays against both her brothers — Curtis, who is 17, is headed to LSU and likely to be on the PGA Tour himself in a few years — not from the forward tees but from the tips at TPC Eagle Trace, which measures over 7,000 yards.
McLean makes note of the obvious, that “there aren’t many 15-year-old girls going up against Tour players, much less from the same set of tees.”
“But she can handle it,” he says, “She’s got all the tools.”
If this sounds like it’s building toward Michelle Wie 2.0, it’s not.
Lexi Thompson doesn’t want to follow Wie’s ill-fated spike marks and tee it up against men.
But she does want a chance to compete against the best women in the game.
Instead, she has to wait to fulfill her career ambitions completely until she’s 18 because the LPGA has an arbitrary minimum age requirement for membership.
Unless the women’s tour gives her a waiver — which she has not yet petitioned for, and isn’t likely to get if she does — Thompson will spend the next three years playing in a maximum of seven sanctioned events on sponsor’s exemptions.
That’d be fine if she was attending school and living the life of a "normal" — whatever that means — teenage girl, but, OMG, she doesn‘t, like, even go to the mall!!!
She’s home-schooled — a reflection, McLean says, of the “awful” public school system in Miami — and long ago decided, by herself, that she wants to play golf for a living.
Last month, she turned professional, signing an endorsement contract with Cobra-Puma golf, and since then has quickly made a splash.
Thompson finished tied for 10th at the U.S. Women's Open and on Sunday tied for second at the prestigious Evian Masters in France, just one shot adrift of the winner, Jiyai Shin.
“No one in golf, male or female, has ever won $315,000 in three tournaments as a 15-year-old,” says McLean.
So the girl’s got game and, McLean adds, she’s got “the fire in her belly.”
“She wants to compete against the best and I think she‘s ready,” he says.
“She’s a monster. She’s 5’11”, she’s an incredible athlete, she’s got speed, she’s got the drive and she’s won a ton of tournaments. She knows how to win.
"I would stack her game up against anyone in the world right now. I’m not saying she’s the best player in the world, but I am saying she’s got the tools right now to compete against anyone out there and she’s only going to get better.”
So why won’t we be seeing much of Lexi Thompson?
Is it because she’s being made to pay for the sins of Michelle Wie and every other overhyped starlet who wasn’t ready for the grown up life?
If so, then the LPGA is a ‘Nanny State’.
Frankly, I’m surprised an enterprising attorney — are you listening, Gloria Allred, or too busy still chasing down Tiger’s estranged mistresses? — hasn’t gone after the LPGA for "restraint of trade" on behalf of a young player.
I understand that the path of child prodigies is filled with road kill, from Macaulay Culkin to Todd Marinovich and Jennifer Capriati to any number of the young Korean girls who obediently practice and play golf without an ounce of passion under the glare of overbearing fathers.
But who’s to say Thompson’s not ready?
Who’s to say she’s not, unlike Wie, a mature 15?
“I think that’s a crazy situation,” says McLean. "I think she’s suffering a little from the aftershock of Michelle Wie and others who have been built up at a young age and turned out not to be as great as people thought.
“But I’ve seen a lot of golfers over the years. I’ve been through this with Christie Kerr, who turned pro right out of high school — a decision I didn’t support at the time — and in my opinion, Alexis is special.”
He evokes images of a young Tiger Woods when he says Thompson’s already got a huge advantage over other young stars in the women’s game because of her length.
“The difference between her and Morgan Pressel and Paula Creamer is that she hits it 30 or 40 yards by them,” he says, “She‘s hitting a lot less club into greens and that‘s a big advantage right there.”
To hear McLean tell it, the LPGA needs Thompson at least as much as she needs a Tour to play.
“I think it’s a pity because she’s the package the LPGA needs in a down time,” he says. "The LPGA is still an American tour and with the Koreans dominating, I think it’d be good to have an American who can dominate out there.”