Marketing 101

Before we begin, let's establish a baseline. Quickly:  Inbee Park is:

(a)  a 60s hit for the Small Faces
(b)  a bee sanctuary in Utah
(c)  the best female golfer on the planet in 2014

If you guessed (c), good for you, because very few people know that. Among her many exploits, Park won three majors on the LPGA tour in 2013, including the U.S. Women's Open. That's a remarkable accomplishment. So when Golf Digest decided to feature a woman on its most recent cover, it was obvious that they'd put Inbee Park on it, right?

Guess not. Here's your cover subject, supermodel Paulina Gretzky:

Nice mashie niblick you've got there, ma'am

Does Gretzky, who is the daughter of hockey great Wayne Gretzky, play on the LPGA tour? No, but she is the fiancee of PGA tour pro Dustin Johnson. So yeah, she's likely been on a golf course recently, although not necessarily wearing that particular outfit. And not surprisingly, some of the golfers on the LPGA tour aren't happy about it:

"It's frustrating for female golfers," Stacy Lewis, the No. 3-ranked player in the world, told reporters at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, according to USA Today. "It's the state of where we've always been. We don't get the respect for being the golfers we are.

"Obviously, Golf Digest is trying to sell magazines, but at the same time you like to see a little respect for the women's game."

Yep -- they're trying to sell magazines. And the last time they had a woman on the cover, it was another supermodel, Kate Upton, along with the legendary Arnold Palmer, in a variation of the ol' American Gothic pose that would have made Grant Wood drop his palette:

Not exactly Grant Wood

There are certain things in life that are immutable. Men like to look at beautiful women. And while Inbee Park is a great golfer, she's not precisely photogenic:

Play on, playa

And for her part, Park understands the game:

Top-ranked player Inbee Park related how it could affect the LPGA's ability to gain on the men's tour in popularity.

"That's just been the way it is for over 20, 30 years," Park said. "We are trying to get closer to the guys, but obviously we are never going to get there. That's for sure. The LPGA is getting better and better."

Actually, it's been longer than 20 or 30 year. If you're old like me, you might remember this magazine cover from back in 1977, which featured a successful Australian golfer named Jan Stephenson, who won three major LPGA events in her career. As a 13-year old boy at the time, it was a source of significant interest to me, as you might imagine:

Yeah, tell me about your backswing again

I had a subscription to Sport at the time, along with Sports Illustrated. As I recall, my mother tried to throw this particular issue away a number of times, as she also did with the Cheryl Tiegs-laden SI swimsuit issues of that era, but I became pretty adept at retrieving it.

Yes, we don't want to encourage adolescent behavior, but there's always a market for adolescents. And while women are rightly celebrated for their athletic achievements, beauty is always going to sell first. And even Stacy Lewis knows this:

Marketing 101