Two Tours are better than one
Michelle Wie won’t be playing in the U.S. Open this year at
Winged Foot alongside Tiger Woods or any other top male golfer in
the world, and I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
Two Tours are better than one
Michelle Wie won’t be playing in the U.S. Open this year at Winged Foot alongside Tiger Woods or any other top male golfer in the world, and I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
Earlier this week the 16-year-old golf phenom from Hawaii failed in her attempt to grab one of the final 18 spots to become the first female golfer to compete in a U.S. Open. She shot a 3-over par 75, which wasn’t good enough for her to earn one of the coveted spots.
And that’s just fine with me. She shouldn’t be out competing on the PGA Tour for the same reasons that Phil Mickelson shouldn’t be competing on the LPGA Tour.
Call me sexist or whatever you wish. The fact is that it’s not right. What’s next, females fighting men in the boxing ring or playing linebacker in the NFL for the 49ers?
There are different Tours for a reason.
If the barriers are supposed to come down and these “pioneering” ventures are supposed to be fair for everyone – pure gender equality – then let an average PGA Tour player who is struggling to keep his Tour card play on the LPGA Tour and dominate. Or let a Champions Tour senior player compete on the LPGA Tour. Or why not have a guy like Mike Tyson fight the top female heavyweight?
Where does it stop?
Since golf isn’t as physically demanding it seems that everyone with a keen marketing eye has been hell bent on seeing a women succeed on a men’s Tour for years.
The first time it was tried was with Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias, a three-time Olympic medal winner in track and field in 1932. She took up golf and got so good she eventually was forced to lose her amateur status.
Since there was no LPGA back then, Zaharias was forced to tour the country competing in exhibition matches. In 1945, she became the first female to ever play in a professional men’s golf tournament. Since there was no LPGA Tour back then, I tend to agree with that decision more. There was no choice.
Today the best women players have the opportunity to compete on a thriving tour and make a terrific living at it. But that doesn’t slow the obsession to break the barrier down.
In 2003, 58 years after Zaharias teed it up with the boys, all the buzz and focus was on Annika Sorenstam, who teed it up in Fort Worth, Texas at the Tour’s annual stop at the Colonial Country Club.
Like Wie, Sorenstam missed the cut. Why? Because they can’t compete with the talent level on the PGA Tour but no one will say so, so the charade continues.
Sure these women are exceptional players and can beat anyone reading this column, but not the top male golfers in the world on a 7,300-plus yard course, so why keep forcing the issue?
Don’t get me wrong. Wie is a terrific talent. She has drummed up as much media hype recently as Tiger Woods and Barry Bonds combined, but that doesn’t mean she should be allowed to compete on the men’s Tour. Doing so gives the Tour a circus-like feel to it.
Look at the sectional qualifying tournament on Monday. Typically, a sectional qualifier draws a few hundred people, mostly family and friends. Thousands were watching Wie compete. That draws interest in the game, sure, but it’s all for the wrong reasons.
In this day and age of being handcuffed by political correctness, every major sponsor and their neighbor have gone to bat for the gifted young golfer because they see the dollar signs she can bring to the table – and that’s it.
So far Wie has competed eight times on men’s Tours, making the cut just once in an Asian Tour event last month. But where does it all end?
What if a man wanted to play in the WNBA would he be allowed too? Should he be allowed too? What if a college baseball player wanted to go back and play T-ball? It would never happen for obvious reasons, but the point is that the line has to be drawn somewhere because clearly we are not all equal in many ways.
If any female should play on the PGA Tour it should be Wie, but that doesn’t make it right, or fair.
Wie has been charting her own path since she qualified for an LPGA Tour event at age 12.
She became the youngest winner of a USGA championship for grown-ups in 2003 when at 13 she won the U.S. Amateur Public Links.
And in the two LPGA Tour events she has played this year between time off from her junior year at Punahou School in Honolulu, she has finished one shot out of a playoff.
That’s all wonderful – she is a women. But if the ultimate goal is to have women play on the PGA Tour with men, then fold up the LPGA and have one unisex Tour.
Everyone could then compete together. If that were to happen, only men would win each week while maybe one or two women would win once a decade – which actually would ultimately become less fair and equal.
Remember the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”
