Twenty-five years after Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs and a
month after tennis teen Serena Williams threatened to "take out"
Karsten Braasch at the Australian Open, the age-old question is
too delicious to dismiss: Are the best female athletes as
talented as their male counterparts?
Could Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb, who ruled women's golf
by winning a combined nine tournaments in 1997, hold their own
on the PGA Tour? Let's start with sand saves, a stat that would
seem to be gender neutral. The '97 sand saves leader on Tour,
Jim Estes, got up and down 70% of the time while the leader on
the women's tour, Caroline McMillan, succeeded on just 57% of
her chances. Sorenstam and Webb were both under 50%. (The chart
below shows final '97 stats.)
The top LPGA players might be more accurate, however. The
women's leader in greens in regulation (Kelly Robbins at 78.7%)
outdid the men's leader (Tom Lehman, 72.7%). Webb's 75.1% GIR
rate helped her lead the women in scoring average—her tidy
70.00 strokes per round would have put her 16th among the men, a
showing that would have meant more than $1 million in PGA Tour
earnings.
John Daly, chivalrous for once, has claimed Laura Davies "would
keep her card and probably win a couple of tournaments" on Tour.
If so, couldn't Sorenstam and Webb, who outperformed Davies by
the distance of a Daly drive in '97, do at least as well?
The best way to find out would be by experiment. No rules keep
the top LPGA players off the guys' turf; all the women lack is a
sponsor's exemption or two. If Casey can play with the best
golfers on Earth, perhaps Annika and Karrie deserve a shot too.
| | Driving
Distance | Scoring
Average |
Birdies
Per Round | Greens In
Regulation | Sand
Saves |
Laura
Davies | 258.4 | 70.86 | 4.04 | 68.8% | 40.0% |
Kelly
Robbins | 256.0 | 70.35 | 3.99 | 78.7 | 44.9 |
Annika
Sorenstam | 249.0 | 70.04 | 4.06 | 73.3 | 47.3 |
Karrie
Webb | 254.6 | 70.00 | 3.82 | 75.1 | 38.0 |
Brad
Faxon | 260.1 | 69.97 | 3.76 | 62.6 | 59.1 |
Phil
Mickelson | 284.1 | 69.83 | 3.95 | 67.5 | 55.6 |
Loren
Roberts | 251.4 | 69.88 | 3.67 | 65.1 | 62.2 |
Tiger
Woods | 294.8 | 69.10 | 4.25 | 70.3 | 44.0 |
Issue date: February 23, 1998
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