From Pro Tennis to Pro Golf

Australian Scott Draper was a successful professional tennis players for many years. Now, he's a successful professional golfer.

Draper won the New South Wales PGA Championship in Sydney on Sunday, shooting a final-round 65 to finish at 20-under 268.

In tennis, Draper reached a high of No. 42 in the world singles rankings and was a major championship winner in mixed doubles. Now 32, he made the switch to full-time in 2005. But he's not the first successful tennis player to take up golf as his tennis career is winding down:

• Ellsworth Vines: The onetime No. 1 tennis player in the world and winner of the 1932 Wimbledon and 1931-32 U.S. Open titles, Vines' name sometimes pops up in discussions of the greatest tennis players of all-time. In his late 20s, he switched to golf and went on to win five times on the PGA Tour, and reached the match-play semifinals of the 1951 PGA Championship.
• Althea Gibson: Like Vines a tennis Hall-of-Famer, Gibson was the first African-American Grand Slam winner in tennis. She won 11 Grand Slam titles in all, including five singles majors. But in 1964, she switched to the LPGA Tour and played sporadically for several years.

If there's a good candidate among the current crop of Grand Slam tennis champions as someone who could have success with a switch to golf, it might be Venus Williams. Williams was a celebrity participant in VH1's Fairway to Heaven tournament in 2004, without ever having played golf before. But after just one quick lesson with the host club's pro - who praised her as an "amazing athlete" with prodigious golf potential - Williams was managing to advance the ball through the air.

Plus, as has been reported, Williams is dating Hank Kuehne. Given that Williams is almost as tall as Kuehne, and Kuehne is almost as skinny as Williams, Venus might someday be outdriving Hank.