Erica Blasberg was so proud of her 2,100-square-foot house in Henderson, Nev., a bedroom community outside of Las Vegas. The far-flung LPGA schedule has a
THE MYSTERY OF ERICA BLASBERG - Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com Skip to main content Sign In ArchivesClassic GalleriesSports IllustratedSwimsuitSI KidsPrivacy PolicyTerms of UseLatest NewsPrivacy SettingsJanuary 4, 2023ArchivesClassic GalleriesArchivesClassic GalleriesOriginal IssueDecember 13, 2010 THE MYSTERY OF ERICA BLASBERGHow could a onetime rising golf star be gifted with top 10 talent yet struggle to break even on the LPGA tour, possess Madison Avenue magnetism yet be such a loner? But the most difficult thing to understand is this: Why did she take her own life?Author:Alan ShipnuckTABLE OF CONTENTSORIGINAL LAYOUTErica Blasberg was so proud of her 2,100-square-foot house in Henderson, Nev., a bedroom community outside of Las Vegas. The far-flung LPGA schedule has a dislocating effect on the players; Blasberg's solution was to make her place as homey as possible. "Every room looked as if it was out of a magazine," says Irene Cho, Blasberg's best friend on the tour.For Blasberg her first house also had symbolic value as a sign of her much-needed independence. Her golf and family life had always been intertwined. She learned the game from her demanding father-instructor, Mel, and their complicated relationship would define Erica personally and professionally. She turned pro in the summer of 2004, at 19, but a year and a half later was still living with her dad in Corona, Calif. When Erica finally relocated to the desert, Las Vegas and Henderson were boomtowns fueled by a frenzied real estate market, attracting dreamers and schemers from all over. "Erica liked to go out and have fun, and she thought it would be exciting to live in the Las Vegas area," says her mother, Debbie. "She didn't really know anyone out there but was under the impression that there were a lot of young golf pros in the area and she'd find her niche."Blasberg may have thought she was buying a piece of the American Dream in Henderson, but she failed to find a community there. The entire Vegas area was hit hard by the implosion of the real estate market, particularly neighborhoods full of tightly bunched starter homes like Erica's."This is a weird little place, especially for a young person," says a Blasberg neighbor who asked not to be named. "Half the houses are empty. All that's left are stressed-out families and the single people who'd love to get out but can't because they're upside-down on their mortgages." No wonder Blasberg failed to make any connections on her street. "You'd see her at the mailbox or walking her little dog, and she'd smile and wave, but it never went beyond that," says another neighbor, Ben Durfee. "No one knew her here. She was pretty mysterious."On a recent morning there were no signs of life on the street Blasberg called home—no one washing a car in the driveway, no kids on bikes, not even a barking dog. This eerie silence is not atypical, but the calm was shattered on May 10, when police cars and TV trucks flooded the street after Blasberg was found lifeless in her bed. Her death invoked comparisons with Marilyn Monroe and countless hard-boiled detective stories: a beautiful young woman in distress, a murky suicide, a married companion who tampered with evidence, a secret life exposed. These sensational details brought Blasberg a notoriety in death she never achieved through golf.A can't-miss kid who dominated the amateur ranks, Blasberg found only disappointment and disillusionment as a pro. After a miserable 2009 season—12 missed cuts in 17 starts, a career-worst 128th on the money list—Erica walked off the course in the middle of a round at the LPGA qualifying tournament in December 2009. "It was clear she wanted out," says Mel. But five months later her bags were packed for yet another tournament. After a winter of brooding Erica was unable to walk away from the game that had held her in its grasp for so long. On May 9 she was to leave for an LPGA event in Alabama. She had dinner plans with Cho that night in Mobile. The preceding days had been busy and seemingly normal, as Blasberg worked on her game, bought curtains for the bedroom she kept in Mel's house and even had a round of Botox injections. But on the night before Erica was to fly away, something went terribly wrong. That evening she was visited at home by Dr. Thomas Hess, 43. They were friendly from Las Vegas's posh Southern Highlands Golf Club, where both were members. The first time they spoke, at the club, Blasberg asked Hess to examine her hand, fearing a blister had become infected.They would become golf buddies, and on the night before Hess went to Blasberg's house they hung out at a casino. The level of intimacy in the relationship has always been a mystery in the case, but in an exclusive interview Hess told SI last week, "My right hand to God, on the life of my daughter, I never had sex with her. We were friends." He came to check on Blasberg on the night before she was found dead, he says, because she had sounded drunk on the phone. (An autopsy would reveal that there was a cocktail of prescription drugs in her system but no alcohol.) "She was a friend who seemed like she needed help," Hess adds. He poured out her bottles of liquor, had her drink some Gatorade, then stayed for two hours. They watched TV, talked golf and had a chipping contest in the backyard. Asked if there were any warning signs that Blasberg might harm herself, Hess tears up and says in a whisper, "Nothing. Nothing at all." Mel Blasberg has never been able to accept that. "We know from the toxicology and the note she left behind that Erica was taking pills all day long," he says. "How could [Hess] not have seen the signs?"Hess went home to his young daughter and his wife, Lisa, a fellow doctor who until recently worked alongside her husband at the Hess Medical Center, a small private practice in a scrappy part of town. According to phone records provided to the Blasberg family by Henderson police, Erica tried to reach Hess at 3:35 a.m. From 6:12 a.m. to 6:35 a.m., Hess called Erica eight times without reaching her. Eight hours passed before he tried again. Finally, around 3 p.m. he went to Blasberg's house, entering through an unlocked back door. She was dead, with a plastic bag over her head. (This method of suicide is known as asphyxia through rebreathing.) Hess took a goodbye note Blasberg had written as well as a package of Xanax with a label that indicated it was from Mexico (where she had played in a tournament the week before). Hess says that he was so distraught and overwhelmed to discover Blasberg's body that he made a rash decision that would forever cloud her death. "I know [taking the note and pills] was stupid, but I was trying to save some embarrassment for her," he said in a court affidavit. "That whole thing was a fuzz for me."According to Mel Blasberg's lawyer, Nick Crosby, Hess had prescribed medications for Erica. (Hess declines comment, citing doctor-patient confidentiality.) Mel believes that Hess took the note and the pills for fear of being implicated in Erica's death. Police found the missing items in the trunk of Hess's car, leading to a charge of resisting a public officer. Last week Hess pleaded guilty and received a year's probation, 40 hours of community service as well as impulse-control counseling. The misdemeanor will be dismissed if he fulfills the terms of his probation.The court appearance in Henderson marked the first time that Mel Blasberg had laid eyes on Hess. When the doctor arrived in the courtroom, Mel stared him down with a visceral intensity, but he never got off his bench. "I don't want to do something that's going to land me in jail," he said. Afterward, Blasberg was seething that Hess had not made a conciliatory gesture or expression of remorse. Blasberg believes that Hess had a romantic interest in Erica and it clouded his judgment on the night of her death. "He didn't kill her, but she didn't have to die," says Blasberg. "Walking away from her in that situation was so cavalier. If she had been just another patient, he would have handled the whole thing much differently. Maybe he could have seen the seriousness of the situation more clearly. Maybe he takes her straight to the hospital that night. Who knows? But because he had this relationship with her, it completely changed how he acted that night. I think he was more worried with protecting himself than protecting Erica."Blasberg's death cracked open her complicated private life, leading stricken friends and family to wonder how much they didn't know about her. The tragedy also opened a window into the often harsh world of the LPGA, for which young women travel the world alone while competing in a cutthroat profession. Blasberg died in a city in which she had no family and only one close girlfriend; in her final year she sought companionship with at least two married men. In the farewell note Blasberg said she was tired of being alone. This isolation was surely compounded by the lifestyle of a tour pro.Of his daughter's death Mel Blasberg says, "It's an American story." There is indeed something outsized in the sweep of Erica's rise and fall. But hers was also an intensely personal journey, in which a young woman who seemingly had it all was ultimately a victim of her own talent. "I'm not sure I ever got the sense that this is what Erica wanted to do," Mel says of her golf career. "She was forced into something she never would have done herself. Even though she didn't want to do it, she got so good, she didn't have any other choice. It was like she was trapped in her own life."When she was 10, Erica journeyed from Corona to a weeklong golf camp at Arizona State. On one of her first days there a fellow camper pushed her into a swimming pool, and Erica called home sobbing. Days later, at the airport, she again burst into tears while giving a hello hug to her mother. "I thought it was just relief at being home," says Debbie, "but then she said, 'I didn't want to leave.' That's when I knew she was taking this golf thing seriously." How could Erica not? Her father radiated a passion for the game and demanded that she demonstrate a commensurate desire. "The one thing I always wanted her to have was the emotion of wanting it so bad," says Mel. "She was a happy-go-lucky kid, but she could modify her personality on the course. She was programmed to be a competitor. Girls don't know how to compete; it's not in their nature. Over time Erica became a fierce competitor. It was my personality being force-fed into her."Growing up on Long Island, Mel had been taught the game by a transplanted Scot he describes as "real stoic and cold, with very particular ideas about how golf was to be played." Mel competed for Plainview High but says, "I was good, but not that good. I was never quite the player I hoped to be."He followed his father's footsteps into the car business, settling in Corona—an arid town of 150,000 about 40 miles east of Los Angeles—in part because of the promise of year-round golf weather. One night in 1980 he arranged a meeting with an old acquaintance from New York. She sent Debbie in her place, and a year later they were married. Erica was born three years later. In the late '80s Mel opened his own driving range and by 1990 was teaching golf full time, and he worked his way up to director of instruction at Corona's Eagle Glen Golf Club. Erica became his prized pupil.Mel's swing theories were influenced by noted golf gurus David Leadbetter and Jim McLean, but his coaching icon was Vince Lombardi. He adopted an old school, confrontational style when teaching his daughter. "I used to get in her face, to try to break her down," he says. Yet Erica never cracked. This little pixie with a ponytail and frilly ribbons in her hair was "tough and strong-willed," says Donnie McGrath, a close friend and pupil of Mel's who lived at Eagle Glen and regularly played there with Erica. "They were often at each other's throats, and she gave it right back to him. If Erica was fed up with Mel, she would pick up her bag and walk away. But the next day they'd be back out there on the range like nothing had happened."By age 11 Erica had a national profile, thanks to an athletic, repeatable swing and the passion that Mel prized. "She was so fiery," recalls Cho, who was 12 when she first competed against Blasberg. "The rest of us girls were pretty intimidated by her."To supplement his teaching Mel enlisted the guidance of Derek Hardy, a renowned instructor who had mentored Hall of Famer Beth Daniel and 1986 U.S. Women's Open champ Jane Geddes. Hardy was blown away by Erica's raw talent and mature game. "As far as physical tools, knowledge of how to play golf, the ability to envision shots and then execute them, she was as good as anybody I had ever seen, including Beth," says Hardy, 77. He would become close friends with Mel, but that did not exempt him from tinges of exasperation with the father-daughter dynamic on the practice tee. "I would make suggestions to Erica, and Mel would always comment, 'No, that won't work very well.' So I had to learn to tell Mel what I was seeing and he would translate it for Erica. It worked. It made her better. But it did reinforce this exclusionary relationship they had."Debbie, too, was often caught in the middle. "I tried to make sure Erica had a normal childhood," she says. "When she was in high school, she went to the proms, to parties, to football games, she went shopping and had sleepovers with friends. But there were definitely a lot of times when it created tension. Mel wanted golf to always be her priority. Erica sometimes struggled to find the right balance between being a kid and being a top golfer."Erica was heavily recruited by all of the big golf schools, with strong pushes coming from UCLA and USC. But escaping Southern California became increasingly attractive after the Blasbergs' marriage fell apart during her senior year. Erica picked Arizona. "She needed her space from her parents," says Chase Callahan, a friend from Corona who would later become Erica's agent.Blasberg arrived in Tucson in August 2002, only months after Lorena Ochoa had concluded her record-smashing career there, and the comparisons became inevitable when Erica won in her third collegiate start. She didn't finish outside the top eight for the rest of the season, leading the country in scoring average (72.36) and winning Pac-10 freshman of the year and player of the year honors, all of which earned her a place on the cover of Golfweek. During a cameo at the 2003 Welch's/Fry's Championship, a stop on the LPGA tour, she shot a head-turning 64. In the gallery was Mel, who drove to many of the tournaments. "How can I not say that I lived vicariously through her? I got so much joy watching her play," he says.Blasberg turned professional in the summer after her sophomore season with a simple goal: "She wanted to be Number 1 in the world," says Cassandra Kirkland, a teammate at Arizona. In her second event as a pro—on the Futures tour, the LPGA's developmental circuit—Blasberg shot a 62, which is still the lowest score relative to par in the tour's history. She won the tournament going away, and the golf world was buzzing. Says Callahan, "We all thought Erica could be a crossover star who would transcend golf and take the sports world by storm. She could have been as big as Maria Sharapova. Erica was beautiful, she was great with people, and she competed with so much fire. People loved to watch her play. When she shot that 62, it was like, O.K., here we go." What no one could possibly know was that Blasberg's best golf was already behind her.In 1996 and '97 a series of complicated land swaps were consummated between an Arizona developer and the federal government. In exchange for 173 acres of environmentally sensitive land in various parts of Nevada, the Olympia Group received 2,326 acres of desert scrubland at the southern tip of Las Vegas, just west of Interstate 15. The land was miles from the nearest development, but Garry Goett, Olympia's cofounder, fancied himself a latter-day Bugsy Siegel. Goett dreamed of a sprawling housing development that would be like a city unto itself with its own schools and fire stations and parks, a 21st-century, upscale community intertwined by a trail system that encouraged neighborly interaction. At the heart of this development would be an exclusive golf club with a national profile. In less than a decade this vision—dubbed Southern Highlands—sprang seemingly wholly formed from the desert floor, and the salespeople adopted a Capraesque slogan: IT'S A BEAUTIFUL LIFE.Robert Trent Jones was contracted to design Southern Highlands Golf Club, but his early sketches would be some of the last of his long career as he was felled by a stroke. The work was carried on by his son, Robert Trent Jones Jr., and an impossibly lush dreamscape replete with streams, lakes and waterfalls became reality. With initiation fees of $200,000 and custom homes running well into seven figures, Southern Highlands quickly became home to "the who's who of Las Vegas," says Billy Walters, a prominent course developer in the area.Hess joined the club 21/2 years ago, but he came in through a side door: His initiation fee was waived in exchange for his services as the club's on-call physician. Still, Hess was accepted by his fellow members, who universally called him Doc Hess. He was noted for having a low-key presence, a relative newcomer to golf who spent a lot of time at the range trying to dig the game's secrets out of the dirt. To other members it seemed that Southern Highlands was an important part of Hess's self-image. "You could see how proud he was to be a member," says a club source. And why not? Every time Hess drove his Mercedes through the club's imposing front gate, it was confirmation that he had finally arrived after a lifetime of striving.Hess was raised in Chicago, his Nevada license plate serving as an enduring tribute to his favorite baseball team: XCUBSX. After a stint as a Navy corpsman he matriculated at the Ross University School of Medicine, in Dominica, West Indies. In 2003, upon completing his residency at Adventist La Grange (Ill.) Memorial Hospital, Hess moved to Las Vegas to be close to his elderly father. He hung his shingle as a family practitioner, settling in an office a mile from the Strip, in a tidy redbrick building. The waiting-room walls are covered with Norman Rockwell paintings, but these images of Americana are at odds with the surrounding neighborhood. Nearby businesses advertise checks cashed and payday loans. Last February ABC affiliate KTNV did a story about how the Hess Medical Center was in the vanguard of Las Vegas health-care providers offering "concierge" service to patients who were willing to pay a flat fee for around-the-clock access to their physician. Thomas Hess's affiliation with Southern Highlands was a ticket to a more upscale clientele.For Blasberg, too, Southern Highlands was a transporting experience, a 25-minute drive from her very middle-class neighborhood in Henderson but a world away. Having grown up on scruffy public courses, Blasberg was dazzled by Southern Highlands's exclusivity and accoutrements, which included the best practice facilities in town. Erica had her agent aggressively pursue a relationship with the club and ultimately signed a sweetheart deal: In exchange for putting the club logo on her tour bag and for other considerations, she received a lifetime membership and unlimited meals and use of the spa, gratis. "Erica loved Southern Highlands," says Mel. "It was one of the reasons why she stayed in Vegas."Blasberg's rookie year on the LPGA, in 2005, did not result in the coronation that many had expected. She made the cut in her first four tournaments but finished in the middle of the pack at each. It was a testament to her looks and reputation that ESPN asked her to wear an on-course microphone for her … truncated (20,947 more characters in archive)