What should Suzy do?

Female athletes don't have to take on men for validation

If this were one of those awful interactive intrusions that disturbs us while we're watching a game on television nowadays, the www.sportsidiocy.com question before us all would be: WHAT DO YOU THINK SUZY SHOULD DO? SHOULD SUZY PLAY AGAINST THE MEN OR NOT?

It has been weeks since golfer Suzy Whaley qualified for the chance, and she still can't make up her mind. Suzy knows that if she plays well, she'll be a symbol and a pioneer -- You go, girl! -- and at a time when Augusta National Golf Club won't even admit women, she'd surely make a statement.

But she also knows that if she plays poorly, a lot of women will be disappointed in her, and a lot of men -- especially some of the smug guys pounding brewskis at the 19th hole -- will be hootin' and hollerin'.

Suzy Whaley knows all this, which is why, almost two months after she won the PGA Section Championship in Ellington, Conn., beating every man in the field, thereby qualifying to play in the PGA's Greater Hartford Open next summer, she still hasn't made up her mind. To play or not to play? Against men? In the bigtime?

No woman has ever played in a PGA tournament. Or, for that matter, in a men's professional tennis tournament. Or a Major League Baseball game, or in the NBA or the NFL or the NHL. Yes, there are a few sports in which women do now compete against men. As jockeys. As equestrians. As automobile race drivers. But the horses and the cars are the real competitors. In golf, it's strictly the best man -- the best person -- wins. And at the end of four hot days in September, on a course in Connecticut that measures more than 6,000 yards, Whaley emerged as the best person.

Suzy Whaley is no one-hit wonder, either. She was good enough to play for a couple of years on the LPGA tour and now she's the head pro at a course outside Hartford. But the Greater Hartford Open draws the second-highest crowds on the PGA tour. The fairways are tight, the rough mean. Suzy played the course by herself the other day. It was all drivers, three-woods, long irons. This is not Billie Jean King playing a breezy old blowhard. This is taking on the best men in the world on a bona fide championship course. Hey, Phil Mickelson won the Hartford last year.

As if deciding whether to try and blast out of the gender trap isn't tough enough for Suzy, toss in the complication of the Greater Hartford Open having lost its sponsor in June. People are whispering that if Suzy plays the guys, another sponsor will jump on board. If she declines the opportunity, the tournament may fold. Bad enough she has to play for her sex. She has to play for her city, too. Play, Suzy, play.

People are always trying to get women to play against men -- as if somehow that's necessary to certify female abilities. There's been hoopla for months now about getting Serena Williams to take on John McEnroe . What would that prove? The reigning middleweight champion doesn't have to box some fat old heavyweight to validate his talent.

So, if you wanna play with the guys, Suzy, practice your fairway woods and have a couple days' fun. If you don't wanna play with them, we know it isn't because you're scared. It's just because you don't wanna play golf in the middle of the summer with some insecure people who have such ugly legs they don't dare wear shorts like everybody else does.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available now at bookstores everywhere.

 

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