RTF:
Yes. Also, though, I don’t think she was in the sand much, if at all today. And keep in mind that it’s not an accident that she’s playing at the Colonial vs some other course. This one suits here game pretty well. Others would be much tougher.
OK, maybe the science of golf prediction via course rating is perfectly reasonable… :o. RTF, ah, 71 was pretty close. 
I’ll hide behind the course playing soft. That’s it. Of course she hit almost every fairway and green. Very Hoganesque. It was like watching her battle major pressure all day. Which it probably was. If she had drained a few putts…
I did mention back on page one that she was a lousy putter - even by LPGA standards…and that if she didn’t make the cut, blame putting, not length of drive…
Dang:
Yeah, I said as much in the OP.
But I was really surprised to see how her putting actually is. Somewhat unfortunate that the reporters are gushing all over her. If she were a guy, they’d be all over her for the poor putting.
Here’s my summary (and I only saw here play about 6 holes): Great off the tee. Nice and straight and not all that bad distance wise. The one par 3 I saw she seemed to be hitting one more club than the guys (6 iron vs 7 iron). She played smart! Really working the course right. Phil could learn a thing or two. Chipping and putting were just sub-par*(pardon the pun). Great interaction with the crowd.
Hey, I’m worked up enough to want to see a woman qualify and play on the tour full time.
*side note. why does this have a bad connotation when sub-par is really good?
The cut for this event is low 70 professionals and ties. For the moment she leads the PGA in driving accuracy.
Check out this site for the full scoring info.
She’s gotta crank up her game a bit tomorrow if she wants to make the cut. Right now it’s at even par.
An interesting article I read today made the case against Annika playing in the PGA.
His point was that women have gone to a lot of work to make their sports look like an alternative to men’s, with emphasis on different skills, rather than being inferior. The best example of that is women’s professional tennis, which many people believe is more enjoyable and exciting than men’s tennis. Billie Jean King notwithstanding, it would not be good for a woman to play against the men, because she’d be beaten badly, and that would tend to relegate the women’s tour back to the status of ‘inferior’.
The same goes for Annika. If she wins or does really well, then that really does make the LPGA not just a women’s league, but a women’s league for women who aren’t good enough to move up to the PGA. That’s not good for women’s golf. And if she does poorly, it just highlights the big gulf between the great women and great men. And again, that makes the LPGA look like a minor league.
Given that women can’t compete with men, their best chance for healthy sports leagues is to maintain a wide separation, and focus on other aspects of the game. For instance, the serve and volley in Tennis as opposed to a baseline power game.
Now, I’m really hoping Annika does well, just from a purely selfish standpoint - this is great entertainment, and I love an underdog. I hope she kicks butt.
But the writer of the article had a pretty good point.
Annika and a few others, I’m convinced, could compete (make $) with the men on a regular basis. But, the point about women’s golf still stands, IMO. It would kill their tour if the best few players were always being syphoned off into PGA events for the hype. It would be fantastic for the PGA Tour though.
I’m going on record, Annika will score better tomorrow. She may not play better, but I see more birdies in her future. That’s one thing I’ve assumed from the beginning, that the first round would be her worst. Problem is, a 70 might not cut it now.
I’m waiting before we get into any third round predictions…
Sam:
This is a common refrain from a number of writers. I’m not a fan of sacraficing one’s personal ambitions for some “collective good” and I’d be surprised if you were either.
Women’s golf is not like women’s tennis, where it’s some type of alternative. You find every type of male golfer on the PGA making all kinds of interesting shots. Weir’s win at the Masters was a good example. Tiger does dominate, but not 1/10 as much as the press would have you think. You’ve got guys winning in their mid 20s and guys in the late 40s winning.
There’s a lot of upside that women’s golf can achieve, and I think this effort will spur some women on to a higher level of play.
Sure, and that’s the upside. Look at Annika: Her putting game should be improvable, but she hasn’t had to. She already squashes the LPGA. But if she wants to compete on the men’s tour, there can be no holes in her game, because she is already competing at a disadvantage. She must be better than men in all the areas where strength doesn’t matter, because she’s inferior to them in driving distance, and likely to remain so.
It would be pretty cool if golf evolved such that the best women and men played together, and women tended to be much better around the greens than the men, and the men dominated the driving. Different, yet equal. Annika may be able to show that, if her desire to play with the men drives her to new heights of excellence.
She doesn’t need to win tournaments, or even make the cut all the time. The tour average is something like 40% of cuts made. There are tons of male pros who miss the cut in tournaments over half the time, and only occasionally show up in the top 10 or 20. They still make a hundred grand a year or more, which is a damned good living for playing a game you love. Annika might be able to reach those levels of success on the men’s tour.
And on those occasions where she cracks the top 20 or makes the cut, the ratings will increase dramatically, which will bring more money into golf.
But probably at the expense of the LPGA.
Please, don’t anyone assume that Annika can improve her putting. It looks easy, sure. Putting comes and goes, like so many complex and precise sports abilities. I would liken it to making jump shots. One little (miniscule) twitch and your twelve footer is two inches short and left. Knowing that makes you twitch. I’m twiching just thinking about putting. :eek:
The better you hit the ball, the more pressure you put on your putting game to convert. Annika is a classic example. She had lots of birdie opportunities, but very little inside of ten feet. That’s not bad, just the rub of the green. If you make five of the 10-20 footers, you’re a hero. If a couple shots bounce a few inches differently, you have tap ins for birdie.
Anyway, I know something about this particular ailment. I’ve hit 15 GIR and shot a 79. That’s not pretty to watch.
"Please, don’t anyone assume that Annika can improve her putting. "
Beagle: You don’t have to tell me about putting, I’ve been there. But I watched her make a few horrible putts today. She can improve. Knowing her, I’m sure she’s tried. But gues what’s the major lesson she’s going to take out of this experience: that she needs to work more on her putting. If you look at the men, they use a dozen different type of putters and half as many putting grips. From what I can tell, all the women putt the same-- convential grip w/ conventional putters. There’s nothing more personal in the game. Maybe she needs to shake things up a bit. Lots of the men rotate thru putters, changing frequently when the putting gets stale.
I touched on this earlier. I don’t think the “different but equal” thing works as well in golf as it might in other sports. In tennis, the women’s is different because of the extended volleying. But in golf it’s a single person playing trying to do well on a golf course. There is no head-to-head interaction that allows for adapting a new kind of game (she tries to score better, but she doesn’t physically go against another competitor.) A golfer has to try to get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible – there’s no other person she has to beat like there are in other sports.
I also think it’s unnecessary to burden Annika with the weight of women’s sports. She’s playing in a tournament to see how she stacks up. Let her make an individual choice.
Lastly, though the writer might have a point about making women’s sports different, he overlooks an obvious point. Women’s sports look to be different for the very fact that they will never be as good in the pure athletics as the men’s league – they know they can’t compete head-to-head by and large and everybody else knows this. It’s not some secret. I like soccer and I watch the WUSA because it offers certain things I like such as significantly fewer fouls. But if I want to watch great soccer, I don’t watch the WUSA. If a great woman player was able to play in a top men’s league, it wouldn’t stop me from watching WUSA simply because I know I’m getting two different things and the success of the one woman doesn’t mean a thing to what the women’s soccer league is offering.
Annika Sorenstam is 32 years old, so she’s around her athletic peak now and getting to the point where her putting habits are likely so ingrained that she might not be able to improve them.
But still, I wonder… maybe playing on the PGA tour would force her skills up a little higher. Fiercer competition will often cause a good athlete to get better in response.
I am reminded of Hayley Wickenheiser, the Canadian women’s hockey star who went and played in a Finnish men’s league mainly because she was too good for the fledgling women’s league. Apparently her game improved, even with her being mostly a fourth line faceoff specialist.
re Annika’s putting, ESPN showed her stats, and she only sank 1 of 7 putts inside 15 feet, 0 of 3 within 10 feet and 0 of 5 under 20. That’s a lot of birdie trys to only make one. If she maintains her tee to green artistry today, she may make a few more of these.
Come on. There are men much older than her that have tried lots of new putting techniques. How long has Vijay been using the long shafted putter? Not very long, and he’s 40 yrs old. Saying your putting habits are too ingrained by age 32 doesn’t hold water. And I don’t see that age as necessarily a peak in golf. Maybe in certain endurance sports, but not golf.
Do you think Tiger’s game is going to start suffering in his early 30s?
Sam:
One more note on your comment about the LPGA suffering if some of the bets players desert it. I think it’s just a sad fact of life. Do you honestly think that the best women should sacrifice their careers for the sake of the LPGA? The organizers will just have to get more creative.
Perhaps viewership would increase if there were more players who looked like Grace Park, and few who looked like Laura Davies.
I doubt the best players would desert the LPGA. You can make a lot more money and have a lot more status as one of the top ten LPGA players than as the 78th ranked PGA player.
It also (speaking as a woman in a male dominated field) difficult to be the only one of your kind (or one of minority) in a group. The LPGA is just plain out going to be a more comfortable place for women golfers - which is why even if the LPGA were to open qualification to men, you may not see many men take it up - I can’t see it being comfortable to be a guy in the LPGA.
Annika has said she wanted to do this once to test herself. She might do it a few more times, there has been no indication she intends to show up at Q school or try to get a PGA card in any other fashion. The day may come when a woman does, but I really think she’ll be the exception.
(It would be fun to see a co-ed tournament in a Ryder/Solheim cup format. You could even make the women play from the same tees - as long as both teams had the same number of women players slotted).
Speaking of Veej’s putters, he changes putters about as often as changing his shirt. He shot a final round 65 two weeks ago and then changed putters at the Byron the following week, which he won.
True as far as tournament earings go. But the first one to break into the PGA would more than make up for that loss with sponsors, speaking engangements, etc. And she’d have to distinctin of being the first woman in history to do so. She could do this for a year or two and go back to the LPGA if she wanted.
But you’re right in the sense that it’s not something a lot of women would do, even if they qualified. Once the novelty wore off, it’d be back to scraping by on tournament winnings.
Something else to consider, this could also relegate the LPGA to a second tier organization, or a “qualifying” tour, such as the Nationwide. When’s the last time anyone saw coverage of a Nationwide tourney? (golf channel geeks don’t count 
)