David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published June 3, 2003

I'm going to beat the Annika issue one more time

I was all set to blast my Chronicle pal, Jim Butler. I finally got around to reading what he's had to say about Annika Sorenstam during the past few weeks in his "All in the Game" column, and I was irked, nay, outraged. So outraged that I used the word nay in a sentence. No clear-thinking American uses the word nay outside of a governmental meeting, and that's a fact.

Armed to the teeth with statistics, anecdotes, progressions of logic and even a few well-chosen playground put-downs, I decided to peruse his latest column, hoping that there'd be more material with which to stoke my rage.

That's when Jim double-crossed me. He backed down from his Annika-bashing, and I could tell he meant it. For two weeks he had been writing that he didn't think the LPGA's women should play golf on the PGA. My thinking is 180 degrees different. If you can compete with the best golfers in the world, you should have that opportunity. Annika has nothing left to prove on the LPGA tour, so she wanted to measure her skills against a higher level of competition. It's that simple.

On May 16, Jim wrote, "Girls, why don't you all just be happy with your sports and compete against your own gender and let the boys do the same? I hope the current trend doesn't lead to a time when everybody competes against each other."

God forbid.

I guess that's the sentence that really accelerated my ire into overdrive. Patronizing, patriarchal hogwash like that gives us men a bad name. We don't all think like that, you know. Many of us men (dare I say most) enjoy women being on an equal plane, and we find it offensive when one of our brothers pats a woman on the head and says "just be happy." It goes against basic human nature to "just be happy" with status quo. The minute you resign yourself to "just being happy" with a situation you know could be better, you've traded in your humanity for comfort. Most people strive to better themselves, and self-improvement often means taking on tougher challenges.

Would Jim tell a man to "just be happy?" I doubt it.

And then there was Jim's May 23 column in which he wrote, "It just ain't right. I can't deny that the young lady is a tremendous golfer and could probably beat me, but she does not deserve a special invitation to compete against the men. The men must earn their way there and so should she."

As far as I could tell, "It just ain't right" is the only reason Jim gave for his assertion that women shouldn't play on the PGA. I couldn't find another one. It's hard to argue with logic like "It just ain't right." What if Annika had a sex-change operation?

As far as the men being required to earn their way onto the PGA and Annika not deserving a special invitation, a little research has revealed the contrary.

Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods both used exemptions to play in PGA tournaments when they were in college. I don't remember anyone bellyaching about that. I also don't remember cries of outrage in 1992 when Mark Rypien, then quarterback of the Washington Redskins, was granted an exemption to play in the Kemper Open, thereby taking away a spot from a "deserving" PGA pro. The fact is that tournament sponsors can invite darn near anyone to play, and if they want to invite the LPGA's most dominant golfer to play, that's fine with me.

Incidentally, like Annika Sorenstam, Mark Rypien missed the cut. He fired an 80 Thursday and a 91 Friday. Annika didn't tear up the field, but she did a lot better than that.

But like I said, Jim backed down a tad from his stance, so it's harder for me to get as riled up. I'm still riled up, mind you, but it was harder.

"Why do I feel so guilty about the things I said about Annika Sorenstam?" Jim wrote last week. "I will certainly offer my humble congratulations for her excellent showing; however, I still think we ought to keep the competitions segregated by gender."

It's interesting he uses that word, segregated. That's really what it comes down to, doesn't it? Regardless of skill or equity, WE belong here, and THEY belong there -- that's the sentiment. It doesn't matter who the WE are who the THEY are. The story's a familiar one. It wasn't too long ago that black baseball players were told to "just be happy" as they played in the Negro Leagues. Today isn't then, and Annika Sorenstam isn't Jackie Robinson, but the basic concept isn't all that different.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.