Suppose the PGA and LPGA decided to merge, or they lost some kind of discrimination lawsuit and had to mergw, and change the rules to make the game more “equal” for men and women. I’m not an expert on golf, but I would think about the only significant change necessary would be to shorten the courses, so women’s drives would be competitive with men’s. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this. It would have the added effect of making another pool of men, those who didn’t have the power to keep up with the long drivers on the PGA, more competitive in this new league.
Who would benefit from such a change?
The players? Men and women, I bet the pro golfers would mostly vote against it.
The sponsors? Trickier to say, but they’d be trading away two known market segments in exchenge for one unknown and undeveloped one. So they’d likely oppose it.
Society itself? Maybe. I’d like to think so, but I have no evidence in advance of the change that such would be the case.
It would be a terrible idea. There would be no more than a handful of women that would qualify for the PGA Tour (yes, you have to qualify, either by finishing in the top 130 or so the previous year or by coming in the top few in qualifying school - a tournament held once a year). For all the other women, you have destroyed their ability to make a living as tournament professionals. You have also deprived all their fans.
Keep the PGA as an open tour i.e. either sex, then any woman who wants to and is good enough can enter. But don’t destroy all the rest in some idealized attempt at “equality” in a situation where equality is not possible.
How would it change the game? It wouldn’t. Nothing would change because of a handful of women. If change were stage-managed to try make it easier for women, then sure - shorten the courses and make them narrower. But this would result in the men hitting shorter irons to the greens, giving them more control. So they will still score better.
Who would benefit? Nobody. The handful of women who could make it would earn less on the PGA because coming 70th doesn’t pay much. Presumably if they stay on the PGA, it is because they prefer to, so in that sense those few people benefit. For the rest of the LPGA, it is a disaster. It wouldn’t make much difference to the men - a handful of lower-ranked players would no longer make the tour.
I don’t think the women would be able to compete on a level playing field with the men. As I understand it, men would dominate by virtue of better putting alone, even if the rest of the game were made somehow even. You might get one or two women per tournament making the cut. I could definitely see Annika making the cut, I think the pressure she was under affected her game, that pressure would be gone if she were ‘just another player’.
The way I see it the PGA is pretty much an ‘open’ league, because women ARE allowed to compete. Annika is the first woman in quite a while to and Suzy Whaley will play later this year. The LPGA is restricted to women, allowing a more competitive field for women golfers.
As to changing the rules to even it out, I hate the idea of altering the rules of a game to make the competition even. The highest level of play should be open to anybody who can legitimately compete at that level, no special rules required.