Friday, May 23, 2003
Storm over Sorenstram: I already spoke my piece on Vijay. I thought he was mostly right. The point about her being in for a sponsor's exemption is valid, and certainly those that are paying for the tournament can let anyone they want in. That, of course, is not the question. The issue is that there are probably a small handful of female, sorry, lady, golfers who could on a regular enough basis play into the serious money on the PGA Tour - or enough to make a decent living. Clearly Annika is too good for the womens', sorry, ladies', tour. What smacks some people as "wrong" is that the reverse would never occur - take a top 10 male golfer and put him on an LPGA event. Might he not win? Sure. But over time, a very good male golfer would dominate the tournaments. So, the argument goes, what is good for the gander, should be good for the goose. The argument goes that if the Feminists want their cake, we're going to take large sweaty chomps out of it (my juxtaposed metaphors are on FIRE!). I think that to bring some sanity to the argument, one has to recognize that Annika is a very, very good golfer (certainly better than 99.9% of the male golfers in the world, and probably better than 30-40% of the male golfers on the PGA Tour), that her participation is not going to crumble the walls at Augusta, and that the fact that men won't be playing on the LPGA is just the way it's going to be. Still, it's a stunt, and win or lose, nothing Annika does will really make the arguments go away, or change the face of golf.
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