Annika Sorenstam has accepted a bid to play at the Colonial PGA event. This is absurd and ridiculous.
She got in on a sponsors exemption. Isn't there another female that got into this tourney? It'll be interesting to see who she is paired up with. They should place her with Tiger or Hefty or Duval or Sergio. Wonder if she'll make the cut. I think par for the course is 70.
Nothing ridiculous about it at all, so long as she plays from the back tees. It's time female athletes discarded the crutch of a separate gender category, and set out to prove their worth by being competitive, period, not just among other women. Women's tennis should look into the same thing.
Re: Re: Annika to play the Colonial Oh come on! There should be seperate Tours for women SO THEY CAN compete fairly. Not fair to have the Williams sisters getting drubbed by the #631 male player in the world in the name of equality.
Re: Re: Re: Annika to play the Colonial If it happens, it happens. No one can say they weren't given a shot. Don't get me wrong- I support the Sisters completely, no matter who they play against. But any athlete who demands pay (see Wimbledon prize money discussions) equal to a given group of players ought to be given the chance to defeat those players. I know as many if not more people pay to see them play as pay to see Agassi, but I'd like to think that athletics is more than entertainent, at some level.
Re: Re: Annika to play the Colonial This is key. Unlike the majority of muni courses many of us play, lots of these championship courses have women's tees that are > 100 yds. closer to the hole on par 3s and 4s, and often avoid major obstacles such as water or ravines. If she isn't exposed to precisely the same amount of potential hazards as her male counterparts, it's a joke.
I don't really get into golf. With that said, I will follow this with great interest. Annika will be playing with the guys, from the same tees. From what I have heard, she will have to play out of her skull merely to make the cut. This will be interesting, indeed.
Re: Re: Re: Annika to play the Colonial Good to hear she'll be playing from the same tees. Oops, I meant "par 4s and 5s..."
At first I was objected to her playing in the Colonial, but given a few minutes to think about I realized that I would be fine with it...as long as she does play from the mens tees (which I am sure she will). That being said, it should never happen again. You want to create a co-ed association, then fine. Otherwise the women should play the LPGA, and the men should play the PGA. My money's on her barely making the weekend, and finishing the tourni very low in the standings. The Colonial is a relatively tough course, but far from the toughest. Her from the blacks? She's good, but not that good.
Phil Mickelson was asked how well Annika will do. He said she'll make the cut and probably finish in about 20th place. He was asked how he will do. He said, "hopefully 19th or better".
Saw that on the golf channel, got a laugh out of me. However, nearly every guy they interviewed handled it almost the same (i.e. "it's going to be a challenge for her, she has to just play her game.") That is the appropriate answer in this case, but you got the feeling as some searched for the right words that they wanted to say, "she's really gonna struggle."
Annika also might play in the tournament here in Tucson. They are still talking about giving her a sponsor's exemption. It makes sense, she went to the U of A, and they will want the publicity after they got screwed by the PGA (a 60 year old tournament got taken out of the main rotation for the big money Match Play Championship). I think Phil is way off. She will struggle to make the cut. There will be enormous pressure on her to play well. Also, it's much, much harder hitting 3-iron approach shots as compared to 8 or 9-irons. If they let the rough grow at all, forget about it. A side note about (supposed) equality. The PGA has no rules prohibiting female players. The LPGA, on the other hand, has it written into their bylaws that men cannot play on their tour. I wonder what Martha Burke has to say about that?
I'm not sure if this comparison works, but one could argue that it's like the weight class in boxing and wrestling - a smaller boxer can choose to fight in a higher division while a heavier boxer cannot go down a division. Obviously, the deficiency in the Y-chromosome is a huge handicap when it comes to golf, so you have an organization for all golfers and one for those without Y-chromosomes.
I understand your point, skip. It's just that the argument of some of the women's rights groups reeks of hypocrisy, "we should be able to join your clubs, but you can't join ours." Augusta National should ask Hootie Johnson to step down and then hire Tiger Woods as its president. Tiger can then tell Martha Burke, "OK, I'll admit a woman, as soon as I am allowed to play on the LPGA."
I'm genuinely undecided as to what I think about this. Skip's point is good (and one I hadn't thought of) and your question is a reasonable response to it. Let me try this answer on for size (I have no idea if this reflects any legal arguments made so far, I'm just pulling this out of, um, thin air): The argument against an exclusive club works if the club in question is being exclusive for no other reason than other than prejudice in one form or another (we don't want them around because we don't want them around) AND if the excluded group is being harmed (e.g., the club, even informally, provides privileged access to things like business or social contacts that don't exist outside it, or some kind of unique activity, such as playing Augusta). I think that works as a case against exclusivity at Augusta, but what about the exclusivity of the LPGA? Skip's weight class analogy suggests this: it's legitimate to exclude somebody (individual or a class of individuals) if a) they have access to an equivalent of the activity in question elsewhere and, b) their participation would constitute so radical a change that the activity itself might rightly be regarded as having been destroyed. Thus, if heavyweight boxers were allowed to fight as welterweights, there would essentially be no welterweight class anymore. We assume* a similar fate for the LPGA if the restrictions against male golfers were lifted. The same can't be said for woman playing Augusta. *Sorenstam playing in PGA tournaments might be the first step in an extended experiment that would replace the assumption with actual data. If she does well, does that then constitute the basis (or the beginning of one, because you might argue she's just exceptional) of an argument against an exclusive LPGA? I'd be interested in seeing comments from anybody who knows about the court cases pertinent to this issue.
I am into this and hope she does well. There will be some very nervous middle of the pack guys out there that week hoping to not "get beat by a girl"!!!
I've heard this argument a lot lately, and one question comes to mind: Why the hell would any self-respecting male golfer even try to do that? I mean, really, fighting for the right to play from the shorter tees? I would call that "Admitting that you're the biggest pu$$y-ass male golfer on the planet." It's one thing for Annika Sorenstam to want to play a few PGA events. After all, she's clearly the dominant female golfer on the planet. Period. She dominates the LPGA even more than Tiger dominates the PGA. Bravo to her for wanting to try her hand at the highest level of golf. It another thing for a male golfer to voluntarily want to take a "step down."
They never would. But, that's not the point. It's about principle and equal access. If Annika has access to the PGA tour, how come some scrub male golfer can't play on the LPGA tour. I don't think any male pro wants to play on the LPGA, but even if he did, he couldn't. One other thing, Annika does not dominate more than Tiger. Majors are the name of the game in golf, and Annika can't hold Tiger's jockstrap in that area. Annika wins all the tournaments in between, but Tiger has an edge on her in major titles. Heck, just two years ago, Karrie Webb was thought to be the best women's golfer. Tiger has been the obvious leader in men's golf since he won the Masters in 1997. This is not an anti-Annika message I'm trying to spout. I root for her in every LPGA tournament I watch. It's just that things are tilted in an unfair way from Title IX on down (or up). I hope she gets to play here in Tucson, I'll be there every step of the way.
bungadiri, I admit the legal ramifications are beyond me. Interestingly, the PGA used an argument similar to "b" in the Casey Martin case. You asked the question about exclusivity. I wonder what would be an appropriate response for the courts. What could an all-male club say that the courts would be satisfied with? Women can and do play Augusta National, they just can't be members. Also, I have no question "b" would be true if men were allowed to play on the LPGA. The guys who can't make the top 120 on the PGA money list would still dominate the LPGA. That is, the guys on the Buy.com tour would blow away the ladies.
Yep, but aside from the fact that Martin won his case, I don't remember the reasoning the court used against that argument. Personally, I find it hard to see how using a golf cart destroys the competitiveness of pro golf, but I'm not a player so I have to take my own opinion here with a grain of salt. Good question. It's hard to think of one that satisfies the a) and b) stipulations above (again, these are just hypothetical creations of mine--I've no idea if they're close to the reality of law). I guess they'd have to make the case that a woman-free environment constitutes a unique good in some way. I've just spent way too much time trying to think of an example of such a thing that doesn't wander way too close to the realm of stupid "gay" jokes, so I'll spare you. I do find it fairly easy to see why a prohibition against membership, even if women are allowed to play, might be considered problematic, especially given the role such clubs have played in areas extending well beyond golf (again, business deals, informal politics, etc.). Forced to guess, I'd say pretty much the same thing. However, the Sorenstam experiment is about to obviate at least some of the need for guessing. By the way, I hadn't realized until today that she'd been invited to play.
She was also invited to play in the BC Open this year, it's here in Binghamton. Every year they try to get one or two big names to attend. A couple years ago they had the entire US Ryder Cup team because it was right before the Ryder Cup and they used it as a warm up.
Just because some things are closed to you, doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. There's are clubs for women with male strippers that I couldn't get into. But that's not a bad thing and I don't feel particularly aggrieved. If men can't play the LPGA, so what? And what would be the point even if they could? That men can play from the shorter tees? That they could beat a group of people that, on average, are smaller and weaker than they are? Like I said, just because it's closed to men doesn't necessarily mean that it's a wrong that needs to be righted.
It is not and never has been about principle and/or equal access. The entire point of athletic competitions is to produce a set of competitors who sufficiently similar in reasonable measures of performance that outcomes become inherently unpredictable. In any sport where strength and muscle mass are important (and clearly, golf is one of them), you only really have two options: women only competitions or no women competing at all. Of course, by Narmec's logic, why couldn't I go back and insist that my old little league team let me play? How can it be anything other than pure age discrimination?