women|sport

photograph by Damian Strohmeyer

There's no sports logo more widespread than the Nike swoosh. But on the LPGA tour, the swoosh is harder to find than a good lie in deep rough. The reason, according to many players, is that the shoe manufacturer deceived them.

At the end of the 1995 season, Nike announced it was dropping approximately one third of its LPGA clients. "We were told Nike didn't have enough money to support golf," says veteran player Martha Nause. But in November the company signed one golfer, 19-year-old, two-time U.S. Women's Amateur champion Kelli Kuehne (above), to a reported $1.25 million endorsement deal, although Kuehne would not qualify for the LPGA tour until this October at the earliest. "I really don't know Kelli or her golf game," says Beth Daniel, who has won 32 tournaments in 19 years on tour, "but there used to be a time when it was the people who did something out here who got the contracts."

Of course, rewarding young and promising, albeit unproven, athletes is hardly uncommon practice for Nike. But it seemed curious to many LPGA players that the shoe company would give Kuehne an unprecedented multimillion-dollar deal. In women's golf, amateur success has hardly augured professional success. Vicki Goetze, for example, won two U.S. Amateurs and was the 1992 NCAA champion before turning pro amid great anticipation in '93, but she has finished no higher than 56th on the money list since. Kuehne, who has yet to make the cut in three appearances in a tour event, acknowledges the pressure she will face when she does join the tour. "I know a lot of [LPGA players] want to see me fail," she says.

Nike says that it did not mislead LPGA players and that the tour figures significantly into its plans. "We decided to draw back our support of the LPGA to prioritize men first," says Nike general manager of golf Bob Rief. "But we're not turning our back on the LPGA. The next marketing opportunity up for us is women's golf."

Indeed, should Kuehne be successful on the tour, Nike might widen its marketing campaign to include more LPGA members. For now, though, with an estimated 140 of the tour's 150 members refusing to wear any Nike gear, the sign of the swoosh is nowhere to be found. "I don't wear their shoes anymore," says '96 LPGA player of the year Laura Davies. "And I never will."

--Amy Nutt