Golf: Sport's sex wars ruled by money

By JOHN GARDNER

When Annika Sorenstam steps up to the tee to unleash her first drive in the Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, next week she will be surrounded by a barrage of hype about a sporting battle of the sexes.

Sorenstam, the world's best woman player, will be taking on the men of the PGA tour and her performance will be seen as a marker of how women can compete against men at the highest level of sport.

In truth it is no such thing. Although Sorenstam can be believed when she says she wants a new challenge, the bottom line here is the accountant's bottom line - money.

The 32-year-old Swede won 13 tournaments last year and earned US$2.5 million ($4.4 million) in endorsements. Tiger Woods won six and made more than $60 million ($105 million) in endorsements.

Woods is represented by Mark Steinberg, who also represents Sorenstam, and when she expressed an interest in playing a men's tour event Steinberg was consulted over which tournament it should be.

Woods is not playing the Colonial, but Sorenstam's entry has sent public attention through the roof and the club's commercial partners, including the Bank of America, who recently signed a $25 million ($44 million) sponsorship deal, will not be unhappy.

Sorenstam's profile is lower than her dominance might suggest but then, given how publicity works in women's sport, she does not look like Anna Kournikova, never threatens to spill out of her clothing and appears contentedly married. Nobody has provoked a memorable remark out of her. But now she is being seen to fly the flag for women, she is a headliner.

She certainly has a chance of beating more than a few of the male professionals. The Colonial course is one of the shortest on the circuit with a premium on accuracy rather than length. This season Sorenstam is reported to be averaging 280 yards from the tee, more than several men including the defending Colonial champion, Nick Price.

Her only predecessor in taking on the men, the redoubtable Babe Zaharias, made the 36-hole cut in the 1945 Los Angeles Open before a 79 knocked her out of contention. But in terms of the battle of the sexes there was a significant difference between Zaharias and Sorenstam. Zaharias qualified, whereas Sorenstam is in Texas as an invited competitor, which is the factor fuelling some of the resistance from the men who believe she is taking a place from someone who has earned it the hard way.

But whether Vijay Singh, or the others, like it or not, the attention will be on Sorenstam and not on the journeymen male players who score lower. The circus attraction of the battle of the sexes - no matter how spurious - is hard to resist.

When Bobby Riggs, an ageing amateur tennis player, took on Billie Jean King in the Houston Astrodome in 1973, a television audience of 90 million tuned in. King won, although Riggs had previously beaten Margaret Court.

Tennis, with its battles over whether women should get as much prize money as men, seems prone to these duels. In 1998 at the Australian Open the Williams sisters claimed they could beat male players outside the top 200, but when Karsten Braasch, then ranked 203, responded Serena took just one game off him in a light-hearted one-setter, and Venus went down 6-2.

In sports where size doesn't count for much, women have competed against men for years.

Women jockeys and equestrian performers don't raise an eyebrow.

There have been successful women rally drivers and Germany's Katja Poensgen this year raced in the world 250cc motorcycling championship.

And when Paula Radcliffe won the women's section of the London marathon this year, she also took the Basil Heatley trophy, having beaten all the elite British male runners.

And in golf the future might lay in the mighty hands of 13-year-old Michelle Wie from Hawaii, who can drive 300 yards and left 50 men behind her in shooting a 73 in a field of 96 while failing to qualify for the men's Sony Open this year. The American Suzy Whaley has also qualified for the Greater Hartford Open in July.

When you consider Sorenstam's earning power with that of most male professionals, Wie could do well to go hunting in the men's game rather than the contrived one-off which Sorenstam says her Colonial appearance will be.