The First Lady of Thoroughbred Racing

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Secretariat is a name that has been known by hundreds of millions of people for more than 40 years — but most probably never heard of Penny Chenery until the Walt Disney Co. made a movie about Secretariat.

Chenery, who died last Saturday at the age of 95, was Secretariat's owner — but she was more than that, really. She was a tough old bird.

If you didn't grow up in the South, you may not know that is about the highest compliment one can pay. To be a tough old bird suggests that you have lived a long life and fielded everything life threw at you. Penny Chenery was a pioneer, and pioneers always have to be tough old birds.

They rarely win popularity contests.

In Penny Chenery's case she took over her father's once–successful horse breeding business when he became disabled and, applying what she had learned in business school, revived it and pursued her father's dream of winning the Kentucky Derby.

She had her father's love of horses, but she knew that horse breeding was not the kind of business she had studied in school. She encountered plenty of resistance along the way, but she achieved her father's goal with Riva Ridge in 1972.

In fact, with Secretariat, she went beyond her father's dream. She won all three of the Triple Crown races the following year, and Secretariat became the first Triple Crown winner in a quarter of a century.

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Even now when I watch the footage of Secretariat's astonishing victory in the third and final jewel of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes, I feel that same sense of awe and excitement that I felt on that Saturday afternoon in June of 1973.

A decade after that accomplishment, Chenery became one of the first three women to be admitted as members of The Jockey Club, which is the breed registry for thoroughbred horses in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. A few years earlier she became a member of the Executive Committee of the American Horse Council, the horse industry trade association.

When the Disney movie was in the theaters seven years ago, some complained that it was more about Penny Chenery than it was about Secretariat, and there is some truth in that.

But the greater truth is that no movie could fully tell the story of Penny Chenery's remarkable life.

Rest in peace.

The Legs Feed the Wolf

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As France's Marion Bartoli neared the conclusion of her straight–set triumph over Germany's Sabine Lisicki in Saturday's Wimbledon women's final, the announcing team — which included 10–time Wimbledon finalist Chris Evert — looked for explanations for Lisicki's apparent collapse.

It was suggested that Lisicki, who gained a reputation as a "giant killer" in this year's tournament, simply couldn't maintain that level of intensity. She knocked off Serena Williams in the fourth round, then defeated fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska in the semifinal. Bartoli wasn't the big name that the other two were, but she was seeded in the top 20 (Lisicki was 23rd) — and, as always in a Grand Slam tournament, when you're in the final, you can count on facing an opponent who has been playing very well for at least the last couple of weeks.

It isn't impossible, the announcers agreed, for a player to remain focused against three more highly regarded opponents in the same week. It's just very hard to do, especially at the Wimbledon level.

I agree, but for a different reason.

Women's tennis matches are best–of–three–sets affairs. Men's matches are best of five. A quick start is essential in women's tennis because it is a comparative sprint. A fast start is important in men's tennis, too, but it is easier to overcome a bad set in men's tennis — unless it is the fifth one. It's more of a marathon.

If you have a bad first set in women's tennis, your back is against the wall.

And that was the situation Lisicki faced today. She lost the opening set to Bartoli, 6–1, and knew right then she would have to go the three–set distance to win the title.

She had done it before in this tournament.

Two days earlier, she beat Radwanska in three sets. That third set was a doozy, too, a marathon, and Lisicki finally prevailed, 9–7. Epic.

On Monday, Lisicki beat Williams in three sets. She won the first one, then lost the second one and had to turn back the champion in the third set, 6–4.

A few days before her match with Williams, Lisicki needed three sets to beat the lesser known but just as dangerous Samantha Stosur from Australia.

To reach the finals at Wimbledon, it was necessary to win six matches. Lisicki needed three sets to win half of them.

Bartoli, by comparison, won all six of her previous matches in straight sets, just as she did today, and she never faced anyone who was seeded higher than she.

As late U.S. Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks allegedly said, "The legs feed the wolf." I don't know if Brooks really said that, but, whether he did or didn't, it was appropriate for his U.S. hockey team in 1980 and it is appropriate for this year's Wimbledon women's final.

It speaks to endurance. Strong legs permit a wolf to outrun its prey.

I think Lisicki ran out of gas. It wasn't a matter of motivation or emotion. She showed plenty of emotion when the match was over, and Bartoli accepted the trophy Lisicki had dreamed would be hers. The spirit was willing, but the flesh, worn down by seemingly endless tests in the earlier rounds, was too weak.

Killing the other giants had taken too much from her.

Bartoli, on the other hand, was fresh. She hadn't lost a set in the whole tournament. She had more left in the tank. A lot more. Once she got over her first–set jitters — and there weren't many of those — she could have gone into cruise control against the increasingly frantic but ineffective Lisicki.

The legs feed the wolf.

A Different Kind of Final

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About 12 hours from now, Sabine Lisicki and Marion Bartoli will meet in the Wimbledon women's singles final.

I'm sure this isn't what most observers expected when this tournament began two weeks ago.

Lisicki defeated the defending champion, Serena Williams, in the fourth round. That's been typical for the women's singles this year. Bartoli is seeded 15th, Lisicki is 23rd. Only one of the top 14 seeds — Agnieszka Radwanska — got to the semifinals.

Bartoli will be making her second appearance in the championship (she lost in 2007); Lisicki is in her first–ever Wimbledon singles final. Obviously, no matter who wins, it will be her first title at Wimbledon, and that is something that Wimbledon watchers have rarely been able to say. By the time the field has been narrowed down to the last two, most of the time at least one has won the Grand Slam event before.

It has been rarer still for Wimbledon watchers to see a final in which both contestants were seeking their first Grand Slam title, but that is precisely what those in attendance tomorrow will see.

"Neither Bartoli nor Lisicki is a household name," writes Liz Clarke in the Washington Post — and, in the age of Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters, who can argue with that?

The 28–year–old Bartoli seems to be savoring this shot at redemption. "I do just everything a bit better than what I was doing six years ago," Bartoli said this week.

Paul Birch of BBC Sports writes that the final will be a "fascinating encounter between the big–serving Lisicki, 23, and Bartoli, who boasts one of the best returns in tennis."

Birch reports that Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert pick Lisicki to win. Their selections are based primarily on the aspects of the individual games — Navratilova said, "I always go for the person who has the biggest game to win and she has a bigger game."

Evert was more restrained in her praise, but she said, "If Sabine Lisicki plays the same way she has been playing and serves like she has been serving ... then I think she definitely has a slight edge."

I agree with their assessments of the performances in the tournament, but my pick is based on how they have played against each other in the past. I know Bartoli was seeded higher in this tournament, but the fact remains that Lisicki beat a higher–seeded foe in the semifinals (Radwanska) than did Bartoli.

The two haven't faced each other often, but the head–to–head advantage belongs to Lisicki, who is 3–1 against Bartoli.

It should be interesting, and I'm looking forward to watching it tomorrow morning. I feel like I did when I was a child, and my mother made a big production of watching the Wimbledon finals. We would settle in to watch the women's and men's finals and eat strawberries and cream — or what I am sure was my mother's version of it (and may have borne no resemblance to what they actually eat).

I have no strawberries and cream to eat tomorrow — but I think I have a strawberry Pop–Tart somewhere ...

Augusta's Glass Ceiling

The decision by Augusta Golf Club to admit two women to its membership may be "better late than never," as the Boston Globe sneers.

And, with all the politically motivated accusations of a "war on women" being bandied about, I guess it really isn't surprising that Augusta may have felt a certain amount of pressure to end its long–standing prohibition against female members.

Fact is, though, that the PGA bears a certain amount of responsibility for this. More than 20 years ago, as Martha Burk writes for CNN, Augusta had to open its doors to blacks when an Alabama country club's restricted membership came under fire.

The PGA insisted that clubs that discriminated on the basis of race or gender would not be allowed to host a tournament, and some clubs, including the one in Alabama, complied in full. Others did not.

"But there was one exception — Augusta National," writes Burk. "It did open to black men 'after being pistol–whipped behind closed doors,' according to one major golf writer who was around at the time. But it drew the line on the girls."

As even a casual golf observer like myself can tell you, Augusta's policy has not kept the Masters from being one of the four major tournaments on the PGA's schedule every year. Burk is absolutely right when she says the PGA has been "officially ignoring its own policies and looking the other way."

So the PGA has been enabling Augusta's ban on women members.

Now, I'm not a golfer, and I have never been a member of a country club. Over the years, I have visited the country club in Dallas on the Fourth of July to watch fireworks displays, and, once or twice, I have joined my parents and their friends (who were our hosts) for dinner there. But that has been all.

A country club's membership policies really don't concern me — nor, for that matter, do the membership policies of any club. I figure, if a club doesn't want me to be a member for one reason or another (my age or where I grew up or where I went to school or anything else), that is the club's business.

(I'm tempted, at this point, to quote — or at least paraphrase — Groucho Marx's assertion that he wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have someone like him for a member.)

I might feel differently — probably would feel differently — if I was a member of a group that had felt the sting of discrimination, but I'm not. I'm white and male, two groups that have been regarded, historically, as privileged in this country (although many members of both groups haven't felt particularly privileged in the last few years).

And I do understand why many women feel that shattering Augusta's glass ceiling is important. It is symbolic — if nothing else — not unlike Sandra Day O'Connors' appointment to the Supreme Court or Sally Ride's historic trip to space or the vice presidential nominations of Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin.

Or the rumors that have been floating periodically this year about Hillary Clinton replacing the vice president on the national ticket this fall.

I don't mean to suggest that those events were only significant in a symbolic sense. They represented breakthroughs for women. Other women have followed O'Connor to the Supreme Court and Ride into space.

And someday, a woman will be elected president or vice president.

It's empowering to be allowed where you've never been before. I get that.

But I also get that there are millions of people who are without work or have only part–time jobs, millions who have lost their savings and most of the value of their homes, millions who will never be able to retire and who will have to work until, literally, they drop.

It seems to me there are more important things to be concerned about right now than the membership policies of a country club, even one that hosts a PGA major event.