Fore!

By TAD BARTIMUS

Worn down by front-page reality, I turned to the sports section for psychic relief and found history in the making.

Annika Sorenstam has accepted one of 12 discretionary invitations offered by the Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, from May 22 to 25. Sorenstam, 32, has won more tournaments in the past two years than any golfer, male or female, and in 2001 became the first woman to shoot a 59. Last year she scored 13 victories around the world.

Babe Zaharias was the last woman to compete in a PGA tournament; her 79 knocked her out of the final round of the 1945 Los Angeles Open. Three generations, including mine, separate the brilliant play of Zaharias and Sorenstam. In that time, some of golf's greatest competitors -- Marlene Hagge, Patty Berg, Mickey Wright, Judy Rankin, Kathy Whitworth, Carol Mann, Nancy Lopez -- were shut out from the big money on the men's professional golf tour because they were women.

In 1967, the year Charlie Sifford became the first African-American to win a PGA tournament -- the Greater Hartford Open -- I tried out for my university's women's golf team. I hit my first drive 200-plus yards. Then I did it again. And again and again, using the secondhand men's clubs I'd used to learn the game.

I won a slot on the team and called home with the happy news, only to be crushed when my golfing father offhandedly attributed my long drives to "beginner's luck." I'd never been invited to play a round with him, so he'd never seen what my coach described as "natural skills."

The next day, I quit golf. It was a petulant, spontaneous reaction to an innocuous remark by a man who would never intentionally have hurt me. Now I wonder: If there'd been a woman golfer who'd successfully competed against men, would my father have been so quick to dismiss my soaring shots from the tee? Would I have zigged instead of zagged?

A new crop of LPGA stars are out to prove they not only have the talent, but also the guts to go for the long drive against male competitors. In addition to Sorenstam, Connecticut club pro Suzy Whaley will play in the PGA's Greater Hartford Open in July. Even if they don't make the cut their first few times out, their presence signals a coming change on the PGA tour.

They should thank Augusta National Golf Club chairman William "Hootie" Johnson, in part, for their new opportunities. When he stubbornly refused to admit women as members of the hallowed Georgia golf shrine last year he sounded foolish. His response to demands by Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, that females be allowed to join the 300-member club harkened back to the archaic rhetoric of Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett, who stood in the schoolhouse door to block black student James Meredith from integrating the state university in 1962.
Like Barnett, Johnson blustered that nobody was going to tell him what to do and that it was nobody else's business. Ole Miss was a publicly funded institution violating federal laws. Johnson represents a private organization that has the right to exclude members. There are vast legal differences, but not moral ones. No matter the venue, inequality should not be tolerated -- let alone condoned -- in an America built on opportunity for all.

Barnett's defiance lasted just 17 days before President John F. Kennedy sent federal troops to end the standoff. Johnson's sexist battle may go on for a while, but eventually female talent will prevail: dinosaurs like Johnson disappear and institutions such as CBS, which broadcasts the Masters Tournament, can be shamed or boycotted into doing the right thing. These are lessons I've learned in my own battles to win equality with my male peers.

On the same page as Sorenstam's PGA story was another about amateur golfer Michelle Wie, who has accepted a sponsor's exemption to play in the LPGA's Chick-fil-A Charity Championship sponsored by Nancy Lopez in April.

Wie is nearly 6 feet tall, drives up to 300 yards -- and is 13 years old. Attempting to qualify for the PGA Tour's Sony Open in January, she tied for 47th in a field of 96 men. Then the Honolulu eigth-grader tied for 43rd in the Hawaii Pearl Open, where she was the youngest, and only, female player in a field of 193 golfers. Her father, B.J. Wie, encourages her to set higher competitive goals and accompanies her to tournaments.

When Wie plays in Lopez's tournament in Stockbridge, Ga., the same month Hootie Johnson hosts the Masters in nearby Augusta, he ought to drive over and watch Wie hit 300 yards from the tee. If he does, he'll see not only his worst nightmare, but also golf's future.

© 2003 The Women Syndicate

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