Pepper left a bad taste with dotty behaviour

TWO YEARS ago, in the heat of the battle for the Solheim Cup at The Greenbrier, West Virginia, an incident occurred which was in itself disgraceful, which brought discredit to its perpetrator and which came close to diminishing the competition itself.

So much so that 24 months later, on the eve of the fourth playing of the Solheim, the newspapers and magazines are still discussing the antics of the player concerned, Dottie Pepper Mochrie as she then was, Dottie Pepper as she is now. One paper talked of the "Acquired taste of Pepper", another said "Europe want to cool redhot Pepper" while a magazine said: "Pepper hates to lose and it shows." Pepper is in Wales this week for the matches which feature the women professional golfers of America versus those of Europe, in a Ryder Cup format. She is the best American woman golfer by a distance and she plays the game with an intensity that is both obvious and communicable. It makes her an opponent who is not only difficult to beat, but also unpleasant to play against, and her behaviour two years ago was indicative of that.

It is important to remember exactly what happened at that time, and in the immediate aftermath. Pepper was playing in a fourball, and one of her opponents was Laura Davies. The European player had a 10 foot putt for a halved hole at the third, and missed it. There was the usual moment of sympathetic silence, into which erupted the loud shout of "Yeah!" accompanied by the sight of Pepper, eyes bulging, punching the air repeatedly in her joy at her opponent's miss.

Davies, who had started towards the hole to pick up her ball, stopped suddenly, transfixed by the sight of a half demented Dottie. It was the kind of behaviour which, if done at your club, would have got the person concerned abruptly ejected and told to come back to reapply for membership again when he, or she, had grown up. It went against every concept of sportsmanship and of golfing etiquette and completely against the spirit of the Solheim Cup.

The match was won by the Americans and afterwards Pepper was brought into the press room to talk about it. She was asked about the incident; the exchanges were recorded by a stenographer: Question: "At the third hole, when Laura missed that birdie putt, you gave a pump and said yes, as I recall. She looked like she was a little upset. Did you talk to her about it?" Pepper: "Talk to who about what?" Question: "Should she (Davies) have been upset with you for doing that when she missed?" Pepper: "I don't think anybody would have done anything different." That passage is quite remarkable in that it indicates that Pepper believes that to shout "Yeah" when an opponent misses a putt is acceptable and that there was nothing whatever to apologise about. Furthermore, if she really thinks that nobody would have done anything different, she must play her version of golf with some amazing people.

The incident was so far outside the bounds of normal golf etiquette that in the intervening two years some good golfing people have decided that it cannot possibly have been as bad as all that, that the media are, as ever, hyping it up again.

Yesterday Mickey Walker, the European captain, made that suggestion while admitting that she had not been present at the time. Walker was prepared to dismiss Pepper's shenanigans with the remark: "She shows her emotions in the way that she shows them. You've got to get on with your game and ignore how others behave." Likewise, the American magazine Golfweek has an article about Pepper which, unbelievably, talks about her "fiery competitiveness" in the Solheim Cup, but never once mentions what she actually did at The Greenbrier. The piece talks in snide terms about the Europeans "taking umbrage at the whole display" without saying what that display was, and it adds a comment from an unnamed NBC TV official saying: "I think it's easier to take umbrage when you're getting beat up." They are, in other words, endorsing reprehensible behaviour as being acceptable as long as you win. "She is the embodiment of the spirit of the Solheim Cup," says this piece. She is not. She is the exact opposite.