HUGGAN’S ALLEY:
JOHN HUGGAN
Let’s be honest here. It has long been clear that professional golfers play a ‘different game’ to the rest of us.Those who golf their balls for a living do everything bigger and better. And today those differences have never been more conspicuous. More so than at any other time in the history of the sport – given how far those who compete for cash now tend to launch their drives – it simply isn’t possible to compare average amateurs of either gender with the pros. Like it or not, in the modern world there is only a passing resemblance between the two extremes.
That undeniable fact is equally true when analysing the relative merits of the leading men against their female counterparts. For reasons that are mostly to do with brawn rather than brain, the power golf performed by those at the sharp end of the PGA Tour is largely unrecognisable to their counterparts on the LPGA Tour.
So it is that it makes little sense for the best women players to pay any sort of attention to what the best men get up to. But they do. A recent article in an American golf magazine focused on the various moans and groans emanating from many LPGA players when it came to the sometimes controversial and always esoteric subject of course set-up.
That’s fine, of course. It was an interesting and thought-provoking piece. But what struck me was how much the leading women fell into the trap of directly comparing themselves with the men. Instead of focusing on how to maximise the challenge of each hole and so entertain those watching live and on television, every complaint was directly related to what goes on across the gender aisle. A series of statistics were cited, each one purporting to illustrate how the game played by the men is “better” than that of the women. Some examples:
• It was seen as a weakness that, while there have been only six scores of 60 or better on the LPGA Tour, the PGA Tour has produced as many as 52.
• Male players routinely hitting par-5s in two with mid- to short-irons was portrayed as more desirable than the women being able to reach, say, two of the four par-5s with their two best shots.
• Given the disparity in driving distances between men and women, it was claimed that the equivalent of a 7,300-yard PGA Tour course would be 6,000-yards on the LPGA
Tour (where the average course length is about 6,400-yards). In turn, the common view is that shortening LPGA courses to bring them into line with their PGA Tour counterparts would provoke widespread derision from those concluding that the women would then be playing a game akin to “pitch-and-putt.”
At that point I started to laugh. If any or all of the above is true, then the men are already playing the version of the game the women seem keen to avoid. So, why would they want to make the same mistake? Stop me if that makes any sense on any level.
Of course, perception and reality are two different things. The typical golf viewer/fan/ watcher – you know, those who scream “mashed potato,” or “get in the hole” as soon as a drive is hit on a par-5 – are clearly enamoured by the long ball and lots of cheap birdies made on holes where players routinely reach greens with short irons. Not for them any semblance of sophistication, subtlety or nuance. Instead, all they want is “smash, bang, wallop.”
“If people see the men hitting wedges to a lot of greens and making birdies, then see us missing greens with hybrids and struggling, we are seen as inferior,” says one LPGA player. “Or at least dull in comparison. But that’s what we’re up against. The men get away with it, because the punters apparently don’t realise that they are playing pitch-and putt most weeks.”
I get all that. But here’s the thing. Does the LPGA really want to be the marketing machine that is the PGA Tour? Or does it want to run proper golf tournaments and challenge proper players?
I’m not saying, by the way, that the LPGA is perfect when it comes to that ideal. The players do have legitimate complaints. Many par-5s are too long, to the point where they are glorified 90-yard par-3s for most players. Still, it seems to me the women – even if they don’t know it – are actually getting most things right in the realm of course set-up. The tragedy is that they are doing so in a world where the men are allowed to debase their product and pander to the misguided wishes of a wider and less discerning audience.