Randi,
I don’t see the problem in letting a woman play golf in any tournament. I mean as long as she can actually play. And this woman obviously can since she has won many of them in the past. I just want to know why the men think that women can’t play? Are they afraid of getting beaten by a woman? That is what it seems like to me!

Cynthia, Covington, Ga.

Randi:
Most country clubs I’ve been to continue to operate as the good old boys club. Even the rangers will follow the lady golfers and stop our play to let the male golfers go ahead of us because they believe women golf too slow. Some things have changed. For example, what used to be called the “ladies” tees are now the “forward” tees but you can bet no man would ever be caught using them! When it comes to “men only” tournaments, though, I don’t think you can limit it to the sport of golf, bowling tends to do the same thing. Kudos to Elaine for fighting this and I wish her luck! Please keep us posted

Hi Randi,
Yes Mam’am, a woman has the right to tee off whenever or wherever she chooses, just like a man.
Equally, men should feel free to cook and clean
Thanks!

Randi–

Hi!

As the daughter, granddaughter and niece of lifelong female golfers, I am appalled but not surprised at what Elaine is going through.

For far too long, golf has been perceived as a mens-only sport, as can be witnessed by the monetary gain that professional male golfers like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have achieved both in tournament prize money and lucrative endorsement deals. When you compare the coverage and reverance that the PGA, network television, corporate America and the fans of professional men’s golf bestow upon this part of the sport to the same kind of treatment and attention that professional women’s golfers get worldwide, the outcomes don’t even come close to being equal. In fact, they are downright insulting. The purses that LPGA tournament participants compete for barely would qualify as lunch money for the likes of the PGA luminaries, let alone the first-prize winnings of a major professional women’s golf tournament. As for the endorsement deals, I’m not as aware of the actual dollar figures as I am with the annual earnings that Tiger and Phil get from their various sponsor agreements since these are the deals that the media and the golfing world at large are always talking about. I bet if you ask the average male golfing fan to name a current LPGA competitor, he’d be hard-pressed to answer anyone immediately off the top of his head except, maybe, Michelle Wie, but that’s probably due to the fact that
she’s constantly trying to get bys to play in the professional men’s tournaments, which should also tell you volumes about the current image and state of professional women’s golf in the global professional sports market.

Incredibly talented women like Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer, Juli Inkster and Lorena Ocha, just to name a few, play week in and week out in a sport that they love and one that they have chosen as their career. What does it say about this sport not to mention the international golfing industry when these women who have to work as hard as their male counterparts, aren’t compensated or respected as equally as those men? We live in the 21st century, guys, let’s try and accept that and to realize that just because these athletes wear skirts and ribbons in their hair, they are just as worthy of equal pay and recognition as their trouser- and ballcap-wearing PGA brethren.

Oh, one final fact: Let’s not forget that Elsie McLean (born 1904) is a female golfer. On April 5, 2007, she became the oldest person to hit a hole-in-one on a regulation course at the age of 102. Her achievement, an estimated 100 yards, came at the on the par-3 hole 4, Bidwell Municipal Golf Course.

Take that, Dennis Pines Golf Course!

Carolyn

Jeez, don’t you women have anything better to do than complain about that golf tournament?

Next thing you know, women will be demanding entrance into the Men’s bathrooms across America. STOP the madness.

Discrimination against men happens ALL THE TIME, yet never gets subjected to the hysterical crying and whining and legal battling that women hurl at anything “male oriented.” You don’t see men “crashing baby showers”, do you?!?

Let us have our penises, leave us in peace amongst ourselves, and just LEAVE US ALONE!!

Yes, have the courage to print my comment, thank you.

It’s really not unusual to have tournaments and leagues split by gender in sports - ranging from elementary school athletics all the way up to professional leagues.

I don’t see how this is different.

The “Good Olde Boys” network of golf courses and “men only” clubs are as ancient as the dinosaurs that walked on this earth millions of years ago.

But like the dinosaurs, they will eventually die off.

Randi, have you ever heard of “Curves”? It’s a health and fitness club for women, exclusively for women. Have you seen the stories about “Womens Health Issues” on TV? For every story you see on “Men’s Health” you will see 200 on “Womens Health”. Have you seen what happens to fathers in family court? The shrill cry for womens rights is beginning to become a bit tiresome.

Men and women are separated in golf tournaments for fairness sake. On the whole, men are bigger, stronger and hit the ball farther. For those reasons, men and women have different tournaments and different tee boxes. Sure, some women are great golfers and can hit the ball as far as most men, but how would you feel if your club removed their woman’s tournaments and told them that they had to compete against the men? How fair would your little crusade be to the rest of the women who don’t hit the tar out of the ball? You seem to be a smart woman, I don’t think any of what I said is news to you, therefore I assume that your goal is merely to stir the proverbial pot. Which as I said earlier … gets tiresome.

What is sad is that this topic is not getting any attention at all. Do women really think that discrimination is isolated to just golf. This same stuff happens in the workplace too.

…and we wonder why we after all these years there has not been a female president.

Hey Randi,
Since we all start out life female, it’s unfortunate that some men forget it’s someones aunt, daughter, mother, niece, sister or wife we’re talking about. If, on average, men spent more time listening to the other side of the discussion over replacing the crumbling bricks in their fathers antiquated wall then this would have been resolved in the last century. B*sides, I can’t imagine the argument of male golfers moving faster than their female counterparts will hold much water; the majority look like theirs is about to break + if it wasn’t for the golf carts & the open bar at the clubhouse, they’d be still on the first hole.