One of the many delights of social media is logging in to find some random low handicap guy talking s**t about women’s golf and claiming he’d be a tour pro if he’d been born with a uterus but kept the same physical characteristics.
Most recently, Charley Hull called out a three-handicapper who had claimed to hit his driver 290 and that he’d make every cut on the LPGA Tour and be a top 20 player. “Shall we sort this game out?” Hull asked on Twitter – sorry, I just can’t resort to calling it ‘X.’ “I’ll let him play off the red tees whilst I’ll play off the whites,” she added, just for good measure.
As far as I’m aware, Hull’s offer fell on deaf ears, but I’d gladly pay handsomely to get to witness the inevitable humbling of the three-handicap man. Because, make no mistake, that’s exactly what would happen. If there were any doubts about the immense talent the game’s top female players possess, then Lexi Thompson coming within two strokes of making the cut at the PGA Tour’s Shriners Children’s Open should’ve quickly dispelled them.
Peter Malnati, co-chairman of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council and world number 205 called Thompson’s sponsor invite a “gimmick,” and though he quickly rescinded the accusation, he was right, of course. It was a gimmick, at least by the dictionary definition of the word – “a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or trade.”
And it was a gimmick that worked. The PGA Tour’s ‘Fall Series,’ coming after the completion of major season and the Solheim and Ryder Cups, doesn’t quite get the juices flowing. At the time of writing, three players were tied for the 54-hole lead at TPC Summerlin, 17 were within three-strokes, and we could have been set for one of the all-time great rollercoaster final rounds, but I’d imagine TV viewing figures were low and only the die-hards or the professionally invested were really tuning in.
But for 36 holes, Thompson was the story. It’s hard to express the level of pressure she was under to perform. Annika Sørenstam, who became the first ever woman to tee it up on the PGA Tour when she played in the Bank of America Colonial back in 2003, said “being under the microscope and playing against the men, it tested every little bone in my body. I told myself if I could handle this pressure, I can handle any pressure. … It was a different me.” Thompson is now the seventh woman to play on the PGA Tour, and though each she didn’t quite face the same frosty reception that Sørenstam did – Vijay Singh said he would WD if paired with the Swede – the microscopic attention was still there, particularly given the fact that she’s having her worst LPGA Tour season to date.
She still beat 32 PGA Tour pros, among them multiple tour winners, a major champion, and one Peter Malnati, shot a second-round 69 on a 7,255-yard golf course, and if she played her final five holes in one-under instead of two-over, then she would have made the cut, made history, and made an emphatic statement. In fact, by coming as close as she did – only Michelle Wie (now Wie West) came closer when she fell one shy at the 2004 Sony Open at the age of 14 – she still made an emphatic statement.
Just how good the top women golfers are has to be seen to be believed, and I’ve seen it firsthand. Power is the only real difference in the upper echelons and Thompson, of course, is one of the longest hitters in the women’s game, capable of reaching many of the par-5s in two and found the putting surface on a 296-yard par-4, but still has only averaged 270 yards off the tee on the LPGA Tour this year. Sure, she’d struggle on a 7,765-yarder like Torrey Pines’ South Course, but so do many of the shorter hitting men.
In tennis, one of the other sports that the elite women are just as talented and one of the very few that they enjoy equal recognition in, we’ve seen several ‘Battle of the sexes’ matches and Billie Jean King’s 1973 triumph over Bobby Riggs, who, though 26 years King’s senior, was a former world number one and six-time grand slam champion, was a major milestone and though it would still take 33 years, paved the way for equal prizemoney to be dished out for the men’s and women’s divisions at all four grand slams.
I’m not suggesting that women playing in PGA Tour events should become a weekly thing, but every once in a while it’s most welcome, and the first woman to make a cut – and that will happen sooner than later you’d have to imagine – will be a watershed moment that nobody who witnesses it will ever forget.
And I’d love to see that three-handicap guy get a shot too. It’s not a big call to predict that he’d be DFL, because that’s exactly where I’d expect him to finish in an LPGA event too.
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