Quote:
Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
You've just exposed your signficant lack of knowledge of the game.
As a general matter, golf is a game of skill and not muscle strength in the way most people think of strength (football, basketball, etc.). But male golfers are strong in ways that female golfers are not. Sorenstam drives the ball quite well for a woman. She may even outdrive some of the (much) smaller men. But I guarantee she will be at least 20-30 yards behind her playing partner on every driving hole at this event. And she can't hit her irons as far either. This will mean that she can never reach a par 5 in two and that she will be trying to land on small, fast greens with 2 and 3 irons on par 4s. I'm sure you know that the higher the number on the iron, the higher the ball flight and the more accurate the shot. Whoever she plays with will be hitting an 8 iron into a green and stopping it on a dime. She'll be lucky to hold the green. The differences are MAJOR.
TM
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Okay, Johnny Miller. Allow me to concede the obvious that, in general men are stronger and are able to exert more leverage than women which gives them a natural advantage with the game. That said, let's just look at the statistics for driving distance as a measure (Let me also concede that I'm well aware that there are other measures which could be used, but since you brought it up originally, we'll just use it).
Men's
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/r_101.html
Woman's
http://www.golfweb.com/stats/lpga/distance.htm
Annika has a better distance off the tee than a fair (not enormous) number of men on the tour. John Daly has the greatest distance off the tee, but how many tournaments has he won this year? Tiger is farther down the list than I expected (Currently 48th), and how many has he won this year? Furthermore, there are tournament winners this year who are not appreciably longer hitters than Annika (Scott Hoch, anyone?)
My point, which should be obvious, even to golf experts such as yourself, is that you can win (or let's just settle for being competitive in) a tournament without being the longest hitter, off the tee or otherwise. We could make other comparisons, but then you're getting into apples and oranges, b/c women play off the shorter boxes. Do I think Annika can win? No. Do I think she deserves a chance to compete? Why not? Someone brought up Arnie and Jack playing in the Masters long after their days of consistent competitiveness were over. How is this all that different, except for her um, equipment?
