A GOLF PRO named Suzy Whaley has decided to play in the Greater Hartford Open, a PGA Tour event she qualified for last summer. She'll do it, she said, "to have a little fun" and "inspire young women to play anywhere they want to."
That sounds good, even if Whaley will have to play from the men's tees this time, adding 700 yards and the likely possibility that she'll miss the cut by a mile.
Doesn't matter. Bravo. Her initial reluctance to play and make a spectacle of herself was the sign of a reasonable woman, but symbolism is important.
Why? For starters, there are those green jackets at Augusta National who are holding firm (mostly) against admitting women to their exclusive club despite the benefits Augusta receives for hosting one of golf's premier events. That's not good, not when Augusta members are some of America's corporate leaders whose own company policies would prohibit such exclusionary practices.
Augusta chairman Hootie Johnson argues for privacy rights, but how private can a golf club be that beams out through CBS cameras to the universe its harmless little all-male oasis? There's privacy, then there's medieval.
As a sports fan, as a woman, you can't help but cringe every April. The sepulchral music and overblown references to azaleas aside, the exclusionary policies of Augusta make you wonder what's so wrong with me that I could never get the chance to be a member at the place where they play the Masters. At least two (former) Augusta members felt the same way. They are the only resignees - so far.
In this day and age, you would think we're beyond this kind of gender politics. It's safe to say we are not, especially when the federal government is itching like a dog to get its hands on 30-year-old legislation that broke the barrier on sports participation for young women.
If you have ever nodded in appreciation at the skill of the U.S. women in winning a World Cup or Olympic gold medal in soccer, then you can not like the atmosphere that we currently inhabit.
If you have ever watched Los Angeles Sparks center Lisa Leslie or Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird take over a WNBA game with their skill and basketball acumen, you have to worry about the climate swirling around us.
If you have ever talked to a 53-year-old female basketball coach who laments her own lack of opportunity as a student-athlete but who now, 30 years after the passage of Title IX, takes tremendous pride in the fact that today's collegiate players are bigger, better and more, then you have to be concerned about where we're heading.
Are you listening in Washington, where George Bush's buddies finally have a word they can use to undo so much of what has been gained under Title IX legislation?
The word is "quota," and critics of Title IX are doing a pretty good job of making it appear as if the cuts colleges are making in minor sports for men are being done to fulfill a so-called quota system, since Title IX mandates proportionate opportunities for males and females based on enrollment.
It seems as if gender equity is going to take a hit this January, when all signs point to the Commission on Opportunities in Athletics recommending changes that will pull teeth out of a standard that directs colleges to supply athletic opportunities in direct proportion to the number of men and women it has enrolled. It's not a quota. It's an equitable distribution of opportunities, but the debate will rage.
The commission has just completed a whirlwind tour of the United States. There were town meetings from coast to coast, collecting stories about how men's wrestlers have been wronged; how athletic directors can't drag enough women out of class to fill out lacrosse rosters while the 100th man can't beg his way onto the football practice squad.
The commissioners have now gathered information that will likely lead them to do what they were predisposed to do anyway: water down legislation that gave women the right to a level playing field. The commission will meet on Jan. 8 and issue its report on the 31st.
With all due respect to commission members like University of Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow, who is living with Title IX enforcement issues every day and who laments turning away men who want to walk on to the football team but can't because the roster is capped, the commission's recommendations are all over the road. The unwieldy nature of the recommendations alone should make people nervous - and clamor for further study, more time, before handing over recommendations to the feds.
In the meantime, is it me, or does anyone else's current scorecard on women's athletics look more messy than a kid's coloring book?
It's true. Some of us are keeping score - and not at the expense of the fellas. Women don't want to take sports away from men, no matter what Hootie Johnson or George Bush or any of the downtrodden wrestlers think. No one wants to deny anyone anything they are passionate about.
It's just that the very numbers that Title IX has reversed over the past 30 years prove that without federal legislation, without guidelines by which colleges must comply, women might still be playing a hybrid game of six-person basketball: You can't run, you can't dribble, you can't sweat.
It wasn't that long ago, really.