It is unlikely that he has ever been there, but Fijian golfer Vijay Singh would no doubt approve of the sign that used to hang in the clubhouse of a
fabled golf course in Scotland. ”Lady members,” the sign read, ”shall give way to gentlemen members at all times, except after 4pm between October and April.”
To a game mired in the murk of an autumnal evening, whose attitude to women has long made Fred Flintstone look the apogee of the ”new man”, Singh has added a new chapter of gracelessness.
Discovering that the Swedish golfer Annika Sorenstam had been invited to compete in a men’s tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, this week, Singh spluttered the sort of outraged snort a colonial colonel might have done learning that Indian chaps had taken to the fairways. And not just as caddies. It was a disgrace, he said. A joke, a publicity stunt demeaning the US tour. Allowing Sorenstam to play meant depriving a deserving man of his rightful place in the competition.
It was as good as taking food from his plate. He then promptly made himself unavailable for the competition. Not, he insisted, because of Sorenstam’s presence — that really didn’t bother him at all — but because he had other things to do. Boldly challenging the stereotype of unreconstructed chauvinist that many were anxious to settle on him, he said that he had promised to take his wife shopping instead.
Blustering as he may have been, Singh was not the only professional golfer to express displeasure at the idea of a woman playing the men’s game. Nick Price, the Zimbabwean who won the same Bank of America Colonial tournament last year, said it should not be allowed. And the Canadian Brian Kontak went into battle for downtrodden males everywhere when he said he was going to make a legal challenge to overturn the ruling by the governing body of women’s golf, the LPGA, which precludes men from playing on the women’s tour. It is, he said, an unutterably unfair piece of sexism that women are now playing on the men’s tour but not vice versa.
Unlike, of course, the Royal & Ancient or the Augusta National, the home of the US Masters, institutions that, in their refusal to allow lady members, are merely upholding tradition.
What is it that has made these men so alarmed by Sorenstam’s arrival in their midst? Were they simply worried about an assumed devaluing of their competition? Were they anxious that history was under threat? Surely it can’t be that they see women getting increasingly close to their performance and are keen to retain barriers to prevent a sudden surge of competition from the distaff side?
Well, maybe. There is growing evidence that, in a number of sports, female breath is being felt growing ever warmer on male collars. When she won in April in London, setting a new world women’s record, British athlete Paula Radcliffe was fast enough to have won the men’s Olympic gold medal in every games until 1984 — and to have qualified for the British men’s Olympic marathon team for 2004. But then we should have realised that, after all, she beat every British man who entered the race by such a distance they all needed binoculars just to catch sight of her back
.
In the sports that value determination, stamina and endurance above muscle, women stand almost on an equal footing. It is a revealing fact of swimming, for instance, that while over a thrash of about 50m there really is no contest. Across the 35km of the English Channel, women can cover the great divide just as quickly as men.
And in equestrian sports, the sexes compete in the same disciplines at the same time. Not that it is easy for women. American jockey Julie Krone, who rode 3 545 winners in an 18-year career and was the first women to win a classic, reckons she faced prejudice every day she was racing. So fierce was it that she was whipped, punched and kicked by rival jockeys. Only after she had laid out a lippy horseman called Joe Bravo — removing three of his front teeth with an uppercut that Roy Jones Jnr would have envied — did the physical intimidation stop.
Many of the women who have achieved big things in sport have been obliged to work far harder than any comparable man. Sorenstam, for one, is a golfer whose approach is matched by very few of the players on the men’s tour. Even so, such is the need for shoulders and forearms to wallop a golf ball down the fairway that Vivian Saunders, a former British Women’s Open champion, doubts whether, for all her talents, Sorenstam offers any genuine sort of challenge for male golfers.
”She is more slim and lithe than previous top women golfers, who were built a bit like tanks, so she has shown that timing and technique can compensate a lot for lack of muscle,” says Saunders.
”But however good their swing, however good their clubs are, there is always going to be a strength issue. Women simply will never be able to hit the ball as hard as men.”
So why, if Sorenstam is not expected to survive to the second round of this week’s tournament, have the male players got so shirty?
”It’s not so much a men versus women thing,” says Saunders, ”it’s about snobbery and the game not progressing. I don’t think it’s feasible for men and women to play together, never have.
”What I want is for them to be treated equally. I mean, it’s ridiculous that the Royal & Ancient, which claims it is the governing body of the sport across the world outside America and Mexico, does not allow women members.
”On its executive committee it has women sitting in as non-voting observers, so Clare Downing, the chair of the LPGA, doesn’t get a vote whereas Prince Andrew does. And frankly, he knows bugger all about golf.”
In the end, it is probably as well for his peace of mind that Singh tactfully withdrew rather than loudly boasting about how much he would beat Sorenstam by. Perhaps he has learned a lesson from a sportsman who previously deliberately provoked a sporting battle of the sexes.
Almost 30 years ago, a shouty American former professional tennis player named Bobby Riggs told the world that, even though he was in his 50s, such was the fraudulent lack of ability in the women’s game, he could mash any woman on the planet.
His challenge was taken up by Billie Jean King, the Serena Williams of her day, a woman whose grip on her profession was total.
In a hastily arranged one-off game of mixed singles back in 1973, played before 25 000 spectators in New York, Riggs decided that merely arriving on court would not make his point sufficiently loud.
So he arrived aboard a golden rickshaw, pulled by six curvy models. Charmingly, he referred to his pneumatic entourage as ”Bobby’s bosom buddies”.
If it was intended to debilitate his rival psychologically, it failed miserably. King, barely breaking sweat, walloped him 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Afterwards he told reporters: ”It was over too quickly. She was too good. She played too well. It really wasn’t a fair contest.” —