Columnist Dean Juipe: Beware: True equality has its drawbacks

Dean Juipe

Friday, Sept. 20, 2002 | 10:30 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Women better think twice before they get too excited about this gal who qualified for next year's Greater Hartford Open golf tournament. As in, do you really want to be treated as an athletic equal?

Suzy Whaley, who won the Greater Hartford 2003 Qualifier earlier this week, did so under stilted conditions. She played from the women's tees, while the guys, of course, played from the back.

But if she chooses to take a spot in next year's tournament -- as is her right, and as she is likely to do -- she will have to play from the back tees as well.

She won't be shooting any 71s from the tips, that's for sure. The back tees add 10 percent to the length of a course, and as anyone who has ever played from the back can testify, it's a whole different world when the par 4s start to measure 440 yards and can require 200- and 225-yard carries over ravines and the like.

It's not that she'll embarrass herself, it's just that she will be out of her element. She can't win the Greater Hartford Open and she probably can't even make the cut.

But now she's entitled to try.

And where does this lead us? What if the finest female player in the world, Annika Sorenstam, decides to take a sabbatical from the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour and take a stab at the (men's) PGA Tour?

What would be gained? Sorenstam could make a few dollars over the course of a year, but she wouldn't win any tournaments and her days of winning 10 events (as she has around the world this year) and collecting huge sums of money in the process would be over.

I've played with pro golfers and with countless hackers, but I inevitably have more fun playing with those of similar, mid-level skills. It's simply more enjoyable to test yourself against like-minded competition.

Women need to be careful about such things, especially in light of the male backlash that still exists over Title IX. Many a male collegiate athletic program has been shut down and sacrificed as schools attempt to balance their athletic-participation numbers and get in compliance with federal law, and a lot of men are steamed about it even if they have the good sense to avoid saying so in public settings.

This isn't a novel idea, per se, but try it on for size and gauge the rebellion: Let's do away with separate sports for males and females and have everyone compete under the same rules and regulations. If you want to be truly equal, let's quit dividing the sexes and quit allowing girls to play solely against girls.

That's a ridiculous notion, of course, having one basketball team, one softball team, one tennis team (and so on) at each high school or university, and one and only one professional league for each sport.

But that would be equalization at its most basic, however primitive it seems.

If you ask me, Whaley should do the right thing and step aside and allow someone who might actually win the Greater Hartford Open to have a chance to play. However, she has already failed to do the right thing once, as she should have said she wanted to play the back tees at the Hartford Qualifier so that she wouldn't have an unfair advantage over her male counterparts.

You can't have it both ways, ladies, and a lot of men see this Whaley thing as a humorless intrusion.