Will Martha Burke Picket for Esteban Toledo's Rights?

Will Martha Burke Picket for Esteban Toledo's Rights?
If matters were permitted to flow to their logical conclusion, the biggest potential winners this weekend would be guys like Esteban Toledo, Luke Donald, Chris Riley, and Dean Wilson. What? You’ve never heard of them? Frankly, you’d have to be a real golf fanatic if you had. On those occasions when these guys have cause to take their clubs out of the bag on weekends, their tee times are scheduled well before the networks beam their coverage to affiliate stations. All of the guys mentioned above are professional golfers who have fallen somewhat short of dominating their profession at the highest level. Aside from obscurity, one other thing that all of them have in common is that they can drive a golf ball farther than Annika Sorenstam.
Brahmans, soothsayers, pundits and other know-it-alls insist that Annika Sorenstam is the greatest female profession golfer in the history of the game. But nobody in their right mind believes that she has the slightest chance of winning this weekend’s tournament against the men. Although she played a very respectable first round of golf Thursday, as I write this, she is tied for 73rd. place and will have to scramble to make the cut. Only the top 70 gets to play on Saturday and Sunday. This is one rule that will not be waived for her benefit.
When one peruses the Professional Golf Association’s statistics, one finds few remotely familiar names among those who hit their drives as short as Sorenstam’s 275-yard average. Now driving distance does not necessarily translate into a low scoring average. Nobody knows this better than me. I can hit a golf ball 300 yards off the tee without getting any closer to the pin. But among those who can impose their will on a golf ball’s direction, driving distance makes the rest of their game easier. Being 30 or 40 yards closer to the cup permits one to employ the more accurate short irons and allows competent golfers ( I excuse myself from this fraternity) to stop their ball on firm greens.
Were they granted Annika Sorenstam’s privilege of choosing which tour they wished to play, Toledo, Donald, Riley and Wilson, along with many others, would likely enjoy greater success than they have enjoyed on the men’s tour. Competing against only women has permitted Annika Sorenstam to win 43 tournaments and bank nearly $3 million dollars in winnings. That’s less money than a male golfer would have pocketed after winning 43 tournaments, but it’s one hell of a lot more than Annika Sorenstam could have won had she been forced to compete every weekend on the men’s tour as the afore mentioned quartet must.
Sending women against the men violates one of the few principles of common sense left in our land. Up until now, we have managed to keep political correctness from intruding upon those things that really matter, such as sports. Instead we try gender homogenize those frivolous sectors of our society, such as the military. No sensible person would expect the world’s fastest female sprinter Marion Jones to compete for a spot in Olympics against the likes of Maurice Green. When I was a senior in high school, I compared the world records held by woman against my own high school track team. An all-star team made up of the best women in the world could not have scored a point against my high school. But we seem to have no problem sending Jessica Lynch to go mano a mano with the Iraqi Republican Guard.
Martha Burke, the howl at the moon feminist who once advocated forced sterilizations of all male children, recently made headlines in the New York Times by demanding that Augusta National, home course of the Master’s golf tournament, admit women members. Augusta National declined to be intimidated by Ms. Burke and her homely handful of protesters. Ms. Burke will not expend her indignant energies demanding that gender equity be extended to Ladies Professional Golf events by demanding that Toledo, Riley, Donald and Wilson get their shot at stardom.
Golfer Vijay Singh, invoked the wrath of political correctness by expressing his indignation at Sorenstam’s invitation to this weekend’s tournament. He could have made his point better by imposing himself upon LPGA tournaments and winning every weekend. But he probably wouldn’t care for the play cut.