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Re: Just play the game.

Good points Snoopy. I would add a couple things.

Women hit off tees closer to the hole than men. What effect does this have on performance? Also, do the pars change for women versus men on a course? (I do not know as I am not a golfer).

If there is a league already for women, why does she need to move over to the guys side? She makes good money, has endorsements, etc.
Even though the PGA is open to any professional golfer, the LPGA is not. If the PGA were to try to exclude women, how do you think women's groups would take it? If its not right for men to have an exclusive golf league, why is it right for women? Perhaps a parallel to this is the issue of women only health clubs. Womens groups decry every male only country club or group etc, yet NOW and other womens groups argue that they need gender specific health clubs.

Personally, I have no problems with her playing as long as its via a sponsors exemption. I will have a huge problem with it for a fairness perspective if women are allowed to compete under lesser standards than men.
In thinking about this stuff, I cant help remember living at college over the summer. I had a job on campus and we used to play pickup games. The school I went to usually made the sweet 16 for D2 for womens hoops. We usually had 4 or 5 guys and 4 or 5 girls (all the girls were on the womens basketball team). None of the guys had played varsity basketball in high school or anything but intramurals in college. We started out going guys against girls and we absolutely destroyed the women game after game after game. The tallest guy we had was 6'2 and the tallest woman was 6'5. It got so bad that after the first couple of nights we had to start picking teams because the girls couldnt give the guys a decent game. That has always stuck with me. Its not that women cant play hoops - because they can and some do it very well, but that women really arent on an equal physical scale with men and there isnt much you can do to change it.

I wish the woman luck in her endeavors, but would rather see her become the female Tiger Woods than miss the cut or be a marginal player on the men's tour.

Snoopy the Celtics Beagle wrote:

This post is long, and will veer off the Celtics--and basketball in general--a bit, before getting back to the point, so please be patient.

Some months back a golf player named Annika Sorenstam received an invitation to play in the Colonial golf tournament, which will be the first time in nearly six decades that a woman has played in such a game, heretofore a place for men only. This elicited a number of comments from the golf players who normally show up for this event, few of them supportive. Most recently, Vijay Singh said she "shouldn't be allowed" to play, and if he wound up on her team, he would refuse to play. Then, he suddenly announced he wouldn't be playing in this event at all, withdrawing with a week left before it started.

The gist of comments from Singh and others was that she wasn't good enough to play their game. So I decided to investigate. This wasn't easy as all I know about golf is that Tiger guy normally wins like he was Larry bird at the three point competition, and Golf is supposed to be a civilized game with lots of rules dating back to when the ruined castles in Europe were in one piece and occupied.

Apparently, there are two ways your performance is measured overall for the men. One is your overall performance--how well you played, with breakdowns hole by hole no less--over the last two years. The other way is by how much money you made playing this year. The men and women have two separate groups, and there is no official cross-gender ranking.

First, Annika Sorenstam's listing from the women's list. After playing 5 games, she is second on the women's money earned list, with $554,501. (first place is held by Se Ri Pak who played 8 games, and has won $562,900). She has finished in the top ten in every game she played this year. Financially, as of the official list today, that would make her #55 on the men's list, just behind Brenden Pappas, who has made $556,832 playing in 14 games with two finishes in the top ten.

It is interesting to note, that the official PGA site, which also houses the LPGA site, only gives extended stats on the men, and not the women. So there is no other way to break down her professional game in comparison to the men.

Let's make an assumption that she is a consistent player, which her record would seem to indicate. With a handful of exceptions,the men have played twice as many games as the women at this point. Presuming she continues on her course, she will double her earnings after ten games, giving her just over $1,100,000. That would put her in 20th place on the men's list, just after Scott Hoch, who has won $1,118,923 in 9 games. Top 20 is pretty darned good in ANY league that lists over 200 players at any given time.

But she's "not good enough" to play with the men.

Does anyone expect her to win against the best the men have to offer? Probably not. But those who decry her as "not good enough" need to take a look at the few hundred guys on their list that by the same statistical measurement, aren't good enough either. Sooner or later, the women will be playing alongside the men. Golf is not a contact sport. Nor is it a matter of competing against each other, the experts tell us, it's the golf player against the course.

So what's the big deal in letting women play? The answer, supposedly is that the men are "out there earning a living", according to Mr. Singh. Like it's no more than a hobby for the women. If he's worried about some man that might get beat out because she "makes the cut", then tell the other guy to do better next time. She's not asking for special treatment, so far as I know. She's playing in the same golf park by the same rules. There's no defense in golf, it's not like she can poke check the guy with her golf stick.

So, you're probably wondering what the basketball point is in all this. Sooner or later, it will happen in the NBA. There will be a WNBA player who is better than the rest of the women, who wants a challenge worthy of her talent, and will want to play in the NBA. I recall recently the contract negotiation with the WNBA, where they were David Stern did not discriminate when he screwed their union as much as the NBA was.

We should watch, listen, and learn. When that day comes--and I don't believe it's as far off as many people think--we'll have the hard lessons learned in how to be receptive to the idea. By then, perhaps, Mr. Singh will have realized how foolish his behavior was at this time, and will be looking forward to an opportunity to play with ALL of his fellow golf players.