US Wins the Solheim Cup! Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

SUGAR GROVE, Ill. -- Women's golf keeps waiting for The Big Moment and ...

Hello? Are you still there? Did I lose you already, with those first two words? Women's golf?

Well, picture this: Michelle Wie playing great, smiling, laughing, waving an American flag, out of her shell. A packed house, a record crowd, with fans chanting and singing to the players, and an electric finish.

It all happened Sunday, as the U.S. team beat the European team 16-12 to retain the Solheim Cup. It was everything women's golf could ask for, could pray for. But it was not The Big Moment. That's too much to ask. No singular moment can create a spark here.

If women's golf has hope, then it needs a lot of luck, an improved economy and also a whole lot more days like it had Friday through Sunday.

For women's golf, this was a week with blinders. The women's tour looked like a garden you had forgotten to water for weeks. This weekend was a major rainstorm. Now, just wait to see if something can grow, or if it's too late and everything is dead.

Ultimately, this tour might not make it.

Start with the Michelle Wie problem. Definitely, she bloomed some this week. She is the biggest, most marketable star. She and Natalie Gulbis. But so far, this game's biggest star has been a gimmick, trying to play on the men's tour and failing. And she has been a point of acrimony on tour, as other players felt she was being placed ahead of them without dues. She hasn't won anything yet. So you put that together, and the face of women's golf is a mess.

"By far, I think it was the most fun I've had playing," Wie said. "Every hole felt like a major championship, coming up 18, times 100. I mean, these crowds were absolutely amazing, and to have 11 other team members as great as these people, it was just so fabulous.

"The intensity ... I've never felt anything like that before. Definitely the highlight of my career."



Someone from the team, hearing that, teased her that she's only 19. Others nodded. A few clapped for her. The whole team sat together, and at one point Wie was talking about something privately with Gulbis. Afterward she walked off with her arm around Christina Kim. And when Wie won her final match, beating Helen Alfredsson 1-up, meaning she won by one hole, she ran off and high-fived teammate Angela Stanford.

For the weekend, Wie went 3-0-1. So this was a big weekend for her. She helped a team win, meaning she was playing for a flag and not her overbearing parents. And she was personable. That's three good days for Wie.

Meanwhile, this was a near Dream Team for women's golf, as all the best Americans were here. Wie and Gulbis, yes, but also Paula Creamer, Brittany Lincicome, Kim, Morgan Pressel, Cristie Kerr and Juli Inkster.

That said, it was just U.S. vs. Europe. The world's best player is Lorena Ochoa from Mexico. And the Koreans could have beaten both teams combined.

That's another issue for women's golf: The best players are Koreans who don't speak English particularly well, if at all. Former LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens actually tried to make a rule suspending Koreans for not learning to speak English. If you'd like to know why Bivens was forced out, well, now you know.

That, and the way she ran off hard-hit sponsors with a hard line. But she had one point about the Koreans: If the U.S. media can't communicate with them, then that's going to lead to less coverage, and less of a connect with American fans. Meanwhile, an American hasn't won a U.S. event on tour since May. The Solheim Cup avoided that issue.

"I just think if more people could come out and actually watch us play ..." Inkster said. "If people would write about the golf and not about all the other stuff, you know, we would be ... we're going to be great. We're going to be good. You guys just have to be patient with us."

For the week, a record 120,000 fans came. On Sunday, they were packed several rows deep, and no matter where you stood on the course, you heard wild screaming from somewhere else. The scenes on TV must have been something, as this course, Rich Harvest Farms, built by a Chicago-area rich guy named Jerry Rich, looks part idyllic, part comic book.

A few years ago, Rich gave me a tour of the grounds, including the building housing his car collection and also a carousel, as his wife loved a merry-go-round. Basically, the guy is Willy Wonka, so the event was played in a wonderland.

But did people watch? Will it spark anything?

Stanford, like Inkster, insisted that the product is good. She said the tour just needed to go to more cities, show the excitement to more people.

Sounds great, but that means more tournaments, more sponsors. And this tour has lost several tournaments the past few years, and might lose more -- perhaps in the double-digits -- next year alone. The tour might be forced to take a several-weeks long hiatus next year.

The economy is a big issue, as the men's Senior tour is in trouble, too. There aren't enough dollars to go to niche sports now, and women's golf is a niche of a niche.

Women's golf has Gulbis, known mostly for her great looks, swimsuit calendars and appearance on The Apprentice. It also has Wie, who might have just had her coming-out party. And now it has a weekend. If anyone was still around to notice.

Email me at gregcouch09@aol.com