Leoni Online Articles
LPGA T Magazine 2002
She hasn't kept score in three years -- to the relief of her playing partners' morale
Text by Ray Rogers
Photography by Art Streiber
She's an effortless comedic talent and a universally hailed dramatic
actress, but Téa Leoni isn't just a powerful presence on the big screen -
she also knows how to make an entrance on the golf course, where it turns
out she's also a natural, even in her current condition. Five months
pregnant with her and husband David Duchovny's second child, the leading
lady of such diverse films as Jurassic Park III, The Family Man, and
Flirting With Disaster laughs as she sets up the scene.
"I look like a waddling penguin coming up to the tee box, and for that
reason I don't look like I'll be very deft. I can hear the groans and moans
of the carts behind me when I get up on the first tee, 'Oh God! We're stuck
behind this big whale of a woman!?' And then, "Kaboom! I'll smack-daddy
that ball like 220 yards. Those are good moments."
Wowing the guys on the links is nothing new for Leoni. A strong hitter,
she usually plays off the whites rather than the reds. "My 7-iron goes 125
yards, and my driver goes 190. I could play off any hole with my 7-iron and
get there in the same number of strokes as my driver."
And when she has played in charity tournaments in the past, she has often
found herself in foursomes with three guys who've forked up serious money to
golf with a celeb. It's times like these that she's gone from being "sexy
fodder" to a threat to their masculinity: "Once we started playing and we
were using more of my drives, you get this thing: guys don't like to be
out-shot in golf." It's much less clear on, say the tennis court, where
maybe she's a more talented player in terms of placement or she's faster on
the court, "But the thing with golf, that's just penis size right there.
It's just how far you hit the damn thing out of the box."
Leoni first discovered her strength on the course when her cult TV show The
Naked Truth was hitting some rocky time in 1998. "There were a lot of
business meetings taking place on the course, and it seemed very much a
missed opportunity to be left behind at the clubhouse while people were
going out and having discussions about the fate of show without me," she
recalls. "It was then that I found I had a certain natural ability for
golf."
She also fell head over heels in love with the game. "I enjoy golf the way
a surfer enjoys surfing. It's just those perfect waves and those perfect
holds and those perfect swings," she coos. "If you 'pure' one, its one of
the greatest feelings for an athlete. There's so much more to it than
sport, there's finesse and there's attitude. It's a total mental game."
Mark Twain, who called the sport "a good walk spoiled," had it all wrong as
far as Leoni is concerned, "It's a great feeling to go out and spend five or
six hours in absolute quiet, where there's nothing jerky or sudden, and no
time concerns. It's all about swinging it easy."
And the swinging did come very easy for the 35 year old Leoni - almost from
the start. She admits to a few awkward swings before hitting her first good
swing. Growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, she had her first taste
of gold at age seven. Nothing momentous, she reports, "no broken windows or
anything like that." Her second time out came later in her early twenties,
and it left her shaking like Wile E. Coyote. "I remember experiencing these
cartoonish reverberations that shake your entire body and your teeth after
you hit something with a rather conductive mallet, as a golf club can be.
That was in the middle of my first marriage: Not very memorable - the swing
or the marriage."
Born Golfer
The first swing that worked came at age 29, in Hawaii. Leoni was on
vacation, just chilling and windsurfing, "I remember it was a 7-iron and I
pured it. I think I pured it about 170 yards, and I thought 'Oh my
goodness! This will be great fun.'"
Golfing became such an integral part of her life that she wouldn't even
consider going on a date with someone who did not golf. When her agent
tried to fix her up with her now-husband David Duchovny, Leoni told him to
have the X-Files star (and golf novice) call her when he broke 100, "He
called me before that, I'll just tell you. And I'm very glad he didn't
wait!" she laughs now.
The pair, who wed in 1997, reside in LA with their two and a half year old
daughter Madelaine West. After almost five years of marriage, has David
learned to love the sport? "More accurately, David has learned to loathe
the sport," she cracks. "He's out there more times than I am, angrily
beating away at it. I think it's the most frustrating obstacle he's ever
come across... because David is an incredibly talented, coordinated, gifted
athlete. And then there's golf - over there. It's just different."
A compatible due in most areas of life, Leoni and Duchovny aren't exactly
cut out as golf partners. "Truthfully, we've had moments when we've
finished golfing, and I've said, 'You. . .you. . .you go find a new partner.
Because you get so sour, and that's just not fun.'"
She's not immune to golf woes herself. "The swearing should be quiet. It
will happen," she says in a stage whisper, for effect. Though she's never
had a full on tantrum on the course, she does admit to turning foul to the
immediate threesome around her, "That's happened when my game leaves.
Everybody - no matter how good you are - a day comes when your game just
packs its own bag and walks out on you, and you have no idea what you've
done wrong. It's like being left by a lover. And then everybody around you
gives advice like 'Well you know, you're lifting your head... you're not
really turning your hands right...' At which point you want to take the
remaining clubs that your game left behind and ram them down the throats of
your playing partners."
It's moments like those that have inspired golf fantasies in her
professional career. Although she goes months on end without teeing off
while she's filming, golf is never far from her mind. Last year, while
filming Jurassic Park III, Leoni hit upon her ultimate action-thriller
fantasy. "When you see these action movies, they always pull something
weird out of their bag. I thought, 'You could do such damage with a 2-iron.' It would be interesting for ten or 20 seconds before the person actually
got eaten."
Even though she can't get on the course as often as she'd like, Leoni is in
love with the game. At one point, she fantasized about joining the LPGA,
leaving Hollywood for the green grass of the course. "There was a time when
I was younger and enjoying my career less and golf more. And I thought
maybe I'd be better suited to the LPGA."
At the time, her TV show was coming apart at the seams, and self-doubt was
abounding. It's a feeling she taps into on her forthcoming film, People I
Know, co-starring Al Pacino. "I play a very confused, angry, drug-induced
actress. Performance-wise, it was one of the greatest experiences I've had.
That was one of the most intense experiences because it was such a dark
character. I've never played in a piece this dark before. I thought I can
go right into my own somewhat recent personal history and assimilate with
this character and feel what she's going through and go through some things
again myself, because I can survive that for two weeks." Back in the final,
troubled days at the tail end of The Naked Truth, she felt misunderstood, angry and unsatisfied. "The character actually took drugs, I just dreamed of them," she deadpans.
"What I'm really happy about is that I've found I'm on a bit of a roll in
my career. It started around the time that I did The Family Man. I don't know if it's because it coincided with the birth of my daughter and all of the changes that happen in your head and your heart when that happens, but I
love my work and I never did before."
Golf and Family
She's thrilled about her current projects, particularly her upcoming role
in Woody Allen's' Hollywood Endings, which marks a return to Leoni's
neurotic comic roots that began with her star-making turn opposite Ben
Stiller in Flirting with Disaster. "If I only did Woody Allen projects for the rest of my career I would definitely be flushing down the toilet any
sort of craft I've worked for, but on the other hand, ironically, I would be
totally satisfied," she gushes. "Now I just think the LPGA is doing a
well-oiled machine without me, and probably many more spectators have many
less bumps on their foreheads without me there." Besides, Leoni doesn't
play "regulation" golf anyway. She hasn't filled out a score card in about
three years - though she is thankful for the little pencils that come with
the game. "Since I'm not going to be keeping score anyway, I do sometimes
fill in my eyebrows with it. It makes me appear tougher, stronger. And
then I usually steal it," she cracks.
"It's funny, because you do get in a cart with some people, and the thought
of not filling out a score card?! That's like going to Vegas and not
betting - what's the point? I don't come from that ilk. My father, bless
his heart, when I tell him I'm not going to keep score, I see this strange
pallor come across his face. Then if we play, I can see his lips moving, at
each hole - he's tallying it up. He can't resist it. I'm trying to teach
him the LA sort of la-la land golf. 'We just let it go Dad.'"
Golfing with Dad is a new experience for Leoni, though the family did play
tennis together while she was growing up. "The funny thing is, as a
teenager on the other side of the net, basically I think my brother and I
used to aim for my parents. It was really aggressive. You'd get up at the
top of the net and try to smash it down you dad's throat. And there was no
talking - other than yelling out of scores. I think what a different
afternoon it would be if we had played golf."
Leoni is looking forward to hitting the links with her daughter, when she
grows up. The way she figures it, it's a safer bet for her being the mom.
"I'm no dummy, I know what my intentions were and I know what my daughter's
will be. We're gonna play golf, dammit!" she laughs. "I never grew up with
the sense that golf was accessible even to kids. Today you're seeing people
younger and younger become more avidly involved. I don't remember anyone
young, especially not girls my age, encouraged to get to the golf course.
It was sort of like, 'After you get married and two and a half kids and your
fourth Volvo, then maybe you'll start golfing a bit.' That certainly has
changed, and I can't wait to get my daughter playing. If I look in the
future and think, 'What am I really excited to do with West?' Sitting in a
cart with her, one on one for 4 or 5 hours, just shooting the breeze and
talking and laughing and playing golf, that's going to be dreamy."
Article form "T" Magazine, transcribed by Gertie.
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