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By Derek Redd
Naples Daily News
Nov. 15, 2003
While The Franklin Templeton Shootout entrants walked the
Tiburón Golf Course links Thursday, their wives enjoyed a day at the spa at
The Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort, Naples.
There were manicures, massages, soft cotton robes and
time to talk and relax. At least that's what we can assume. Spa Day was
girls' day out, meaning no guys.
"That'd be like a girl walking through the guy's locker
room," Hank Kuehne's wife, Nicole, says with a smile.
It's one of the little prizes of being a PGA wife, along
with crisscrossing the country and hanging out at the best golf courses in
america.
"It's every girl's dream," Nicole Kuehne says.
But the dream is not always mud masks and cucumber slices
over the eyelids. Tour wives are part-manager, part-maid, part-Muse.
There's laundry to do and somebody's always handing out a business card.
Their job is to make life simple so their husbands can focus on what they
do best -- play golf -- and they can work off the course as hard as their
husbands work on it.
The golfers say they couldn't do it without their wives,
so when they can spend a day at the spa, they've earned it.
The pampering the wives received this week isn't the
norm.
There's the spa day, the dinner and the wives'
Friday visit to the Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida, where they
worked on arts and crafts projects with children undergoing cancer
treatment at the hospital.
Yes, there is some time to sightsee during the PGA
season, but most of that time is spent doing everything possible to keep
the eyes on the prizes.
America has a clouded view of the life of a PGA Tour
family, some of the wives say. The golf fans sitting in front of the
television sets at home see the golfer sink the winning putt, become the
hero. They see his wife run out to the green for a congratulatory hug and
kiss.
That's just the surface, Linda Mediate, wife of
soon-to-be Naples resident Rocco Mediate, says, especially when you have
kids. The Mediates have three.
"When you start having kids, it's tedious," she says.
"It's really hard. Then the kids get sick on the road and you have to still
do laundry and you have to find places to eat and it becomes wearing."
And it's not on the PGA's dime, as many might think.
Linda Mediate says golfers take home about 35 to 40 percent of their
winnings after expenses and taxes.
Raising the children is only part of the job, especially
for the younger Tour families. Many wives take on other jobs, like
part-time business manager and part-time fan club president. When Greg
Norman was on the rise to becoming an elite golfer, it was Laura taking the
business cards, making the reservations and answering the fan mail.
Nicole Kuehne says she collects the business cards during
the year. Husband Hank's bazooka drives are in high demand.
"There's always someone handing Hank cards, wanting him
to do outings," she says. "I help take care of that and there are things at
home that I'm taking care of."
The golfers consider all their wives' behind-the-scenes
work essential, but they really appreciate the companionship they provide
on the road. Golf is intense as it is, and when the golfers are done for
the day, they don't always want to stroll to dinner with the guys they're
trying to beat and they don't always want to hole up in a hotel room and
get room service.
Just having someone there to talk to may be the greatest
gift of all.
"It gets so lonely on the road when you travel by
yourself," Nicole Kuehne says. "There are so many distractions. We can help
alleviate that and help the guys go out and focus."
That doesn't change the longer you stay on the tour,
Laura Norman says.
"Greg just likes me to be there at the end of the day,"
she says. "It's really important to all those guys to go back to the room
and relax. You don't have to be Greg Norman or Shaun Micheel. It's
important just to have that comfort zone."
Micheel found out how nice it was to have his wife in the
audience during the biggest day of his career, the Sunday he won the 2003
PGA Championship in August. Micheel's wife, Stephanie, is a successful
attorney in family law in Memphis and the two await the birth of their son
sometime next week.
Stephanie Micheel normally doesn't travel with Shaun
during the season. She enjoys her career, he says, and he wants her to be
happy. But she was there at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., when
he won the championship.
"I tried to find her in the crowd on every single hole,"
Micheel says. "I tried to find her throughout the entire day. When I hit
the shot, I was 100 percent committed, but doing that really helped me
through. Anything I could do to keep my mind off of what was really going
on."
While the travel is extensive, many wives say it can be
fun. Some of the wives put together little sightseeing tours at every stop.
"It's like a field trip when you were in school," Nicole
Kuehne says. "It's so much fun."
It also helps if you like traveling, as many of the wives
do. Newlyweds Matt and Sybi Kuchar are accustomed to the hectic traveling
schedule.
"Sybi traveled through Europe when she was playing high
school tennis," Matt says. "So she's pretty used to it."
Sybi got her first taste of Tour wife-dom at the end of
the couple's honeymoon. They were in week three of their trip and relaxing
in New Zealand when Matt got the call to come to the Shootout.
Sybi says she doesn't mind, because she gets something a
lot of wives don't -- the ability to give her husband a hug after he walks
off the links.
"I'm just happy to see him every day," she says. "I'm
just happy to see him when he comes back from the course."
And she's happy to tell him he played well, even when he
doesn't think so.
"I think he plays great all the time," she says.
The life of a PGA Tour wife isn't all glitz, glamour and
four-star hotels. It takes love, dedication and multi-tasking wizardry.
When the golfer sinks the putt to win the tournament, she's there with a
kiss, but he's kissing right back.
That win had as much to do with her hard work as it did
his.
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