NAPLES, FLORIDA | It’s the same every year. The practice range on Thursday at the LPGA’s CME Group Tour Championship always has the feel of an episode of The Walking Dead, one where it’s hard to the tell the difference between the dead-eyed zombies and the thousand-yard stares of survivors. Players are exhausted, not just from the long season but from the globetrotting inherent in the fall LPGA schedule.
Since the second week of September, the tour has been to Evian, France; Incheon, South Korea; Shanghai, China; Taoyuan City, Taiwan; Shiga, Japan; and Hainan Island, China, before coming to southwest Florida for the season-ender. That’s 35,491 miles worth of jet lag since the last event on American soil, more if you took a week off in the middle and came home. So, the players are whipped.
Most players take it in stride. All but a handful are out of the running for the $1 million Race to the CME Globe bonus. That makes this just another event for most. If you catch lightning in a bottle and win, great. If not, it’s a nice place to give farewell hugs to everyone until January.
