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Friday, September 15, 2006
Michelle Wie Is Bad For Women's Sports September 15, 2006 Sixteen year old golfer Michelle Wie has missed the cut at another men’s event. At the end of her second round at the 84 Lumber Classic, she was 24 strokes off the tournament leader’s pace, and 14 strokes from the cut. This was her sixth failed attempt to become the first woman in 61 years to make the cut in a men’s tour event. Last week, she finished dead last against the men in the European Masters. Her quixotic quest has gone from clever novelty act, to mildly interesting amusement to, now, just plain annoying. Let’s keep things in perspective. Wie isn’t trying to become the first woman to win a professional men’s golf tournament in over six decades. She’s trying to be the first to qualify to play in the third round. She stands absolutely no chance of coming close to actually winning a men’s event, much less finishing in the top twenty in a PGA tournament. Indeed, she has yet to win an LPGA event. What makes this train wreck worse are her comments after each embarassing finish that, in her estimation, she played “really good.” Granted, she’s only sixteen, but if you’re going to pretend to be an adult then expect to be held accountable as one. Neither she nor her parents seem close to admitting that her efforts to continually compete against men has become nothing but a publicity stunt; and a now bad one at that. The following probably disqualifies me for the president of Harvard University job, but perhaps there are some innnate physical and biological differences that inure to the benefit of males when it comes to activities requiring a high degree of physicality. Even in a sport such as golf, where physical specimens like John Daly and Craig (”The Walrus”) Stadler can finish atop the leader board, pretty much each and every male can beat pretty much each and every female; at least at the professional level That’s just the way it is. Just like the way even one of the lowest ranked male boxers can have his pugilistic way with pretty much any woman who decides to lace up the gloves, even if she is the daughter of a man who could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee back in the day. Even when a woman emerged victorious, it was only because it wasn’t a fair fight. Bille Jean King was 25 years younger than the 55 year old Bobby Riggs when she beat him in 1973. She had just won the Wimbledon championship along with the French and U.S. Open championships the year before. And this was only after Riggs had already beaten Margaret Court who, in 1971, had herself reached the Wimbledon finals only to lose to Evonne Goolagong. To sports fans and those of us who look at sports as one of the lasts bastions of meritocracy, these made for TV “battle of the sexes” events only serve to diminish the otherwise legitimate accomplishments of female athletes by turning them into carnival acts. Interesting enough to pique your interest once, yes. But ultimately nothing you would again pay money to see. [This article also appears at Release The Hounds!] Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by ric ottaiano at 4:29 PM |
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3 Comments:
I am a woman athlete, and don't completely disagree with what you say about Wie. Hoewver, to drag Billie Jean King into this discussion is a disservice to her and the "Battle of the Sexes" concept. Bobby Riggs was a known tennis hustler and taunted the best women tennis players until they finally, begrudgingly decided to play him. It was HIS publicity stunt. He was the one who initiated, saying he could beat the best -- NOT a 55 year old. He finally got what he deserved. King learned from watching the match between Riggs and Margaret Court. He didn't learn. He underestimated her and he was spanked.
...and as a result advanced the Title 9 cause in a way no one else could have.... Tens of thousands of women have now gone to college on scholarships in part thanks to BJK...
Deidre,
I don't think there's much argument that Riggs was acting like a moron publicly and deserved having his ass kicked then. He taunted other male players as much as he did Court and King, and his male opponents, too, let him have it-- Riggs even in his prime in his 20's and 30's wasn't at the level of the top male players.
What Ric is saying in his post here, is that the overhyped, overhoopla'd "Battle of the Sexes" Riggs-King match-- and all the loudmouthed, bone-headed interpretations of it afterward-- was little more than idiocy that got far too much publicity.
Bobby Riggs was positively geriatric at the time for tennis, a 55-year old player with documented health issues who wouldn't have made the Top-10,000 among men's tennis players at that point, let alone be considered one of the better male players in professional tennis-- i.e., Riggs wasn't in any way a pro tennis player at that point, he was at the level of an amateur, and a very irritating blabbermouth not-very-good amateur at that, as the real male pros considered him and his BotS hoopla.
So you essentially have a 55-year-old, unhealthy, no-longer-pro and not-very-good men's tennis player playing against *the* champion of the women's game at the time-- of course he's getting his ass kicked, just as I'm sure most amateur men's tennis players would get their asses kicked by Venus or Serena Williams or any of the other Top 50-Top 100 pro women in tennis.
The point is, you can't look at a match pitting essentially a geriatric amateur men's player against the #1 pro women's player-- and draw any conclusions about that whatsoever, other than Riggs was an idiot, as virtually all the male pros agreed at the time.
If you want to do something approaching a real assessment of male-female skills at the top levels of the sport, you have to pit professionals of the male game against similar-level professionals of the female game. That test has, in fact, occurred-- Jimmy Connors played against Martina Navratilova (when both were somewhat past their prime but still pros), and Martina got smoked. Furthermore, Karsten Braasch-- some chain-smoking German tennis pro ranked around 300 or so in 1998-- beat both Venus and Serena Williams in separate exhibition matches around the Australian Open that year, 6-1 and 6-2, when the Williams sisters were utterly dominating women's tennis.
I'm always skeptical about these sorts of tests anyway, but based on the little data that we have (the Connors-Navratilova and the Braasch-Williams 1/2 matches), with similar-level male/female professionals squaring off, the conclusions are obvious-- the men thus far have been clearly much tougher.
Now, in my own heart of hearts, I do think and certainly hope that female tennis/golfing pros could get good enough to compete and even beat at least some of the highest-level male pros. Maybe better technology that equalizes some of the strength-related factors can help somewhat. But strength isn't the only issue-- in sports like billiards and chess, where strength is far less of an issue (precision and strategy being most important), the top women still lose to the top men-- in pool for example, Jeanette Lee and even the great Allison Fisher are consistently beaten by the top male pros and even many amateurs, while in chess, the formidable Polgar sisters (Susan and Judit Polgar) are still regularly defeated by the top male pros such as Vladimir Kramnik and Alexei Shirov.
IOW, I *do* think that the top women pros are capable of elevating their game and becoming competitive with the top male pros, but it's not just a matter of strength, and that point certainly isn't here yet. Title IX may have helped to increase the competitiveness level of women's sports. (FWIW Lonnie, Billie Jean King had little to do with Title 9 esp. the BotS match, it was more one of those oddly liberal impulses that Richard Nixon himself (along with his environmental and affirmative action legislation, among other things) put to Congress and signed from his and Congress' progressive impulses at the time.) However, Title IX in itself really hasn't changed the male-female gulf in pro sports all that much-- Wie, the Williams sisters, Lee are all post-Title IX. I think that women's sports are raising their level and will continue to do so, but are not at that point yet.
As for Wie herself, I think she will one day be capable of taking on the pro men, but she needs to master the basics first. Walk before she can run. But I think she can do it, and I'm one of the people cheering her on.
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