From the article you link:

In 1998, he played in an unofficial event called the "Super Tour" that matched the scorecards of nine professionals after playing 18 holes a day in four Asian cities. Laura Davies was invited to play, and finished 39 strokes behind Singh.

"Laura Davies is a long-ball hitter, but she still had to hit good irons," Singh said. "It's just different for ladies to play on the men's tour. It's like getting the Williams sisters to play against a man, and they're far better athletes than she [Sorenstam] is."

HAhahahahah! Damn, no PC for that guy. Vijay Singh was, of course, totally right:

Amid notable controversy, Sörenstam was invited to play in The Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas in May of 2003, making her the first woman to play in a PGA event since Babe Zaharias, who qualified for the 1945 Los Angeles Open. Cheered through each hole, she shot a +5, tying for 96th out of the 111 who finished the first two rounds, not enough to make the cut.

funny stuff.

VS's quote is mad confusing. Davies? Sorenstam? which one??? no wonder i hate golf. soccer, anyone?

Hey GC,

obviously you don't golf much. She might have finished 'poorly' through your genetically superior eyes, but she still hit low 70s both days with enormous pressure on her back. She won, even in defeat...

obviously you don't golf much. She might have finished 'poorly' through your genetically superior eyes, but she still hit low 70s both days with enormous pressure on her back. She won, even in defeat..

1) I have no doubt she could wipe the floor with me at golf even if she spotted me 30 strokes. I don't golf at all. Tekken Tag Tournament is another matter, though! :)

2) Given that she predicted she could win (!) the tournament, and given that she got a gimme entrance (sponsor's exemption) rather than a competitive one...I don't think she "won in defeat".

3) the "enormous pressure" was entirely of her own making. she shouldn't have predicted she could win the Colonial, or even competed without earning a spot:

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Without ever mentioning his name, Annika Sorenstam brushed off Vijay Singh's comments about her playing in the Colonial, saying he was entitled to his opinion. She also said she thinks she can win the tournament. "I believe so, if all the stars are lined up right," she said Wednesday.

If she'd won or even done well, I would have course have eaten my words (as would have Singh, I'm sure). But you don't talk trash like that without expecting any in return.

I would have course

= I would of course (homonym typos, a real problem for aging brains...)

No professional competitor in any sport goes into a tournament or a game, regardless of the odds, and claims they will LOSE the tournament or game. They always say something to the media like "If I give 110% I have a good shot at this..." or various words to that affect. She was simply building confidence in herself. Of course the media will quote that, it keeps people interested. She had a legit shot at making the cut, but didn't. Go look for articles now and find the analyst who disagree but I've played the game long enough to know she had a legit shot if she just got a few more yards distance. She's a 'rookie' in the all male version of the game. Rookies rarely succeed, but she did for competing against the odds. Isn't that why we all root for the underdog?

More importantly, she managed to boost viewership and interest in that tournament significantly. These are all commercial sporting events, tamashas, of course the sponsor wanted her in the tournament. We'll probably see more of the same in the future, especially as the skill gap narrows in games like golf.

She had a legit shot at making the cut, but didn't....

Big difference between making the cut and winning the tournament. The point is that Annika talked trash, and so did Vijay. Her trash talking was unwise given that she lost terribly.

The media has a big interest in making everything into this GI Jane nonsense, where women can run just as fast/jump just as high/etc. as men if only men weren't so *sexist* about it. The more that myth is punctured, the better. It moves beyond the silly/funny/ludicrous aspects of Kill Bill or King Arthur and becomes injurious when it leads to putting women in frontline combat, lowering standards for firefighting, telling women to use hand-to-hand combat rather than guns to defend themselves, etc.

This requirement is similar to that imposed by police and fire departments across the nation, which require both men and women to meet the same physical requirements to serve as police and firefighters. The standards are demanding, and there are relatively few women who meet the requirements; in a recent New York City test, only 11 of the 354 women (3 percent) who passed a written exam were able to pass a demanding physical test that mimics the tasks required of actual serving firefighters. (By comparison, 57 percent of the 1,016 men who took the physical test met the standards.) Nonetheless, according to Lieutenant Brenda Berkman, President of the United Women Firefighters, "It would be wrong to create the impression that the physical exam is an insurmountable barrier for women applicants."[35]

The game works like this: take the *most* exceptional woman, try to find an overlap, and then maintain that "women are just as capable at X physical endeavour as men" with copious citation of the solitary overlap. Obviously this is illiterate from a statistical/distributional point of view, but it can be useful in the hands of a sophist. And as demonstrated above, it has real consequences.

Note that I'm not talking about restricting non-physical careers, etc., so we can forget about the strawman. I am saying that I'm happy that the media's crusade (which was a continuation of the NY Times 40+ stories on Augusta National) met defeat via hard reality.

people were just as skeptical about women being able to cope in academia and various "smart" professions, claiming that women who could succeed in school and as businesswomen, etc, were the exception.

people were just as skeptical about women being able to cope in academia and various "smart" professions, claiming that women who could succeed in school and as businesswomen, etc, were the exception.

And they were wrong about certain things (women dominate in the body of medicine & law) but not in others (men still outnumber women in engineering, science, and math, as well as at the top ends of most competitive sciences...though there are exceptions). There are neurological reasons for these average differences:

Sex differences in problem solving have been systematically studied in adults in laboratory situations. On average, men perform better than women at certain spatial tasks. In particular, men seem to have an advantage in tests that require the subject to imagine rotating an object or manipulating it in some other way. They also outperform women in mathematical reasoning tests and in navigating their way through a route. Further, men exhibit more accuracy in tests of target-directed motor skills--that is, in guiding or intercepting projectiles.

Women, on average, excel on tests that measure recall of words and on tests that challenge the person to find words that begin with a specific letter or fulfill some other constraint. They also tend to be better than men at rapidly identifying matching items and performing certain precision manual tasks, such as placing pegs in designated holes on a board.

These are scientific facts, supported by many different lines of evidence (animal models, biochemistry, molecular genetics, brain scans, etc.). Read the full article, you might find it interesting. It's also a *fact* that women aren't as tall or as strong as men on average, and likely never will be in the absence of genetic/cybernetic re-engineering.

When it's a sports situation, it's not that big a deal. If Annika Sorenstam had made the cut (she might have), more power to her. But it's a different matter when we're talking women in the infantry or lowered-standard female firefighters...and that is really the ultimate goal of NOW and the Times in pushing the Augusta National/Sorenstam type stories. It's to prove the (false) point that women are just as good at men at athletic endeavours, and that excluding them from dangerous physical activities is actually "sexist" rather than in the best interests of both soldier and citizen.

So could any of the 95 men who beat Annika (the best woman golfer the world) play the LPGA? It would be wrong to keep them out after all, and they would win big cash prizes. They would wipe the floor with all the ladies and claim 'gender equality' as the reason to play.

this is rubbish

The media has a big interest in making everything into this GI Jane nonsense, where women can run just as fast/jump just as high/etc. as men if only men weren't so *sexist* about it. The more that myth is punctured, the better. It moves beyond the silly/funny/ludicrous aspects of Kill Bill or King Arthur and becomes injurious when it leads to putting women in frontline combat, lowering standards for firefighting, telling women to use hand-to-hand combat rather than guns to defend themselves, etc.

so when u watch superman, you believe he's more credible because he's a man? this is hilarious.

When you look at what Tiger Woods has accomplished over the span of his career, and then you look at what Phil has accomplished, I think it's pretty clear Tiger is the world's best golfer. I think alot people tend to resent him for dominating the game the way he does, so they look for any excuse to say that someone else is better than him. He loses one tournament, and they are all over him, as though he is not entitled to have a bad day or week or even month. But there is no one playing today who has a better overall career than he does.