Women in Sports

Last week, I took a potshot at the WNBA that I was surprised I didn’t get nasty comments about. That means one of three things. 1) Nobody read the post. 2) My reader’s blindly follow my lead, or 3) Nobody felt that my comment was out of line. I suspect it’s the first one, but here is why I was’t out of line. Any league of any sport or competition that is exclusionary is not using the entire talent pool available and is, therefore, an inferior sport to a league that does. In this case, the WNBA does not allow men to compete and is there for inferior to the NBA, which has no such exclusions for women, if they were to make a team. It’s the same reason that the NCAA (which doesn’t allow professionals) is inferior to the NBA and the reason why both Major League Baseball in the beginning of the 20th century and the Negro Leagues were inferior to the league as we have it now, as those leagues were exclusive based on race. I understand that the exclusions placed on the WNBA are to foster better competition for an entire gender, but pretending as though the talent pool is comparable is rather foolish.
That being said, I don’t believe that team sports as they are are a safe place for women and men to cohabitate yet. It has nothing to do with the existing talent of female basketball, baseball/softball players or any other competitors in team sports that both genders participate in, but rather the men. I would wonder if if the male sexual ego or chivalry would interfere with normal clubhouse relationships. Then it seems a logical question of whether or not competetiveness and sportsmanship would be affected if the closely associated ego and chivalry were set aside. That’s not to say that women and men don’t have a place in competition with each other. In individual sports, there is already the talent available for both genders to compete with one another.
Michelle Wie is currently receiving a lot of press for attempting to qualify for men’s events. The criticism is that she hasn’t won yet in the women’s game, an argument I have troubles with. Why didn’t we say that to Tiger Woods in regards to Pro-Am tours? Because Woods, at a young age, was capable of competing with the elite, the professionals. Wie has proved herself worthy of the challenge. She certainly isn’t better than many tour professionals. Yet. However she is only 17 and if she wants to play on the PGA tour with regularity, the route should be via historically male tournaments. The problem is the lure of cash in the LPGA. Annika Sorenstam proved that she can be competitive with the men in her one foray into a PGA event, but has decided she would rather stick to the women’s game, as she stood to take in more cash that way.
Golf isn’t the only sport where this an issue. In their prime, Venus and Serena Williams could definitely have made there way through a few rounds of several men’s tournaments. They played the game the same strong, powerful way. But they made millions instead playing with the WTA. If the money wasn’t there in the women’s game, would the Williams’ have tried to compete in some ATP events? We may never know, but I would love to see it.
The point is, I would love to see some women golfers compete with the men. I think the talent, particularly the young talent, is available for women to make noise in the PGA. Just because women and men may not mix in a team atmosphere doesn’t mean the same is true for an individual competition. Besides, I’m all for anything that makes traditional golfers uncomfortable. – Ryan