Peter Williams: Deserving are left wanting by PR con job

Annika Sorenstam showed she was human last week. For the first time this year she didn't win a golf tournament that she played in.

It stopped her winning streak at five - one short of Nancy Lopez' 1978 LPGA record.

But she is still the best player in women's golf - and the best thing about her is that she has no intention of trying to play in the British Open.

The Royal and Ancient pulled one of the biggest PR con jobs of recent times when they announced that a woman could play in their premier event - provided she was able to qualify.

It immediately made the R&A, founded in 1744, look like a thoroughly enlightened and progressive institution in tune with modern society.

This, mind you, is the same outfit that still insists on a separation between amateur and professional golf in which one group can win money for prizes and the other can't. There is no other sport in the western world where such an antiquated and discriminatory attitude prevails.

But by stating that the Open is now for "golfers" instead of "male golfers" the R&A have done little more than appease liberals and feminists.

There is as much chance of a woman hooking one off the first tee in the British Open as there is of one hooking the scrum for the All Blacks.

Sorenstam knows this and very pointedly commented after her experiences playing with men on the PGA Tour that she would rather play with women. She could beat them. She knew she'd never win a tournament against the best male players, so why try?

She's in the game to win and the only place she could do that would be on the LPGA Tour.

So when the R&A told the world that women could play in their Open, the attention went not on the only woman who would have a chance of being good enough, namely Annika, but on a 15-year-old schoolgirl who hasn't won anything against adults, and, even more significantly, hasn't won anything of consequence against players her own age either.

Michelle Wie is only 15. She apparently drives the ball 300 yards. She is also tall, slim and rather fetching to a male eye.

She's a player tournament promoters want to have around. She'll be playing in the PGA Tour's John Deere Classic in July for those very reasons.

A few noses are out of joint that she gets a start when hundreds of much better male players from the main tour, the secondary tour, the mini tours and the Canadian tour won't get a game in Davenport, Iowa while a skinny kid - a skinny girl even - will.

The John Deere Classic offers a direct entry to the British Open to the highest finisher who is not otherwise exempt.

In theory this could go to a player who misses the cut, as Ms Wie is most likely to do. However, it's more likely the recipient of this place will go to someone in the top 20.

Meanwhile, aspiring Open contestants who don't wear a bra and who are not otherwise exempt - like Michael Campbell - have to go and play a nerve-racking 36-hole qualifying tournament four days before the Open itself.

The R&A are welcome to do their bit for the women's movement. But they should ensure that the qualifying process is fair for all or, if they are going to make a bit easier for a woman, at least make it easier for someone who deserves it.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY