Columnist Dean Juipe: Golfers on the LPGA Tour enjoy spoils of their sport

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, April 16, 2003 | 10 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.

The course is in beautiful shape and the players are like a traveling fashion show, arrayed in sparkling colors and form-fitting clothes.

If you go to the Takefuji Classic that opens Thursday at the Las Vegas Country Club, it will be a visual feast.

You may even treasure the experience. Beyond seeing the world's finest female golfers all dolled up, you get the sights and sounds of competition on a bright, tradition-laden course.

And unless you're committed to walking with tour star Annika Sorenstam, you shouldn't be bothered by elbow-to-elbow crowds. Parking -- across the street at the Convention Center -- is apt to be the only time you come in contact with congestion.

Which is another way of saying the $1.1 million that will be at stake is about right. It's not the $5.6 million that the men played for last week at the Masters, but it's apropos for a Ladies Professional Golf Association event that doesn't figure to draw a huge crowd and is limited to the Golf Channel on TV.

The LPGA players come across as content with the tour's overall prize money and the ancillary opportunities available to them. There's a lot of pressure but it's a good life if you have the skills and a suitable temperament.

They're not complaining, although females in another sport are and females in still another sport should.

Equity is always an issue and it's omnipresent in sports, as the protest concerning the membership criteria at Augusta National once again proved. Women want and deserve equal treatment but are accepting of lesser money in pro sports, a disparity that's relatively unavoidable given the laws of supply and demand.

Yet I maintain there's one legitimate complaint that can be filed within the narrow parameters of today's sportscape, and it concerns women's tennis. With bigger stars and a more attractive style of play than the serve-accentuated men's game, female pro tennis players could rightfully feel shortchanged.

They deserve better.

Let's say the gals on the LPGA tour, at least for the time being, do not.

And those who play in the Women's National Basketball Association certainly do not, although they're the ones embroiled in a potentially devastating labor dispute. Without a resolution to their situation by Friday, it's said there won't be a WNBA season and the league might well collapse.

The WNBA exists by the good graces of the National Basketball Association, which funds the teams. Recently, the NBA tossed an additional $12 million subsidy the WNBA's way.

But the players see what their NBA colleagues are making and they're jealous, even though they play fewer games and draw far smaller crowds. Just since last season, two WNBA teams have folded and two others have been relocated.

The average salary in the league ranges from $46,000 to $60,000 and top players can earn almost $80,000 for a four-month season. Also, nearly 80 percent of the league's players supplement their incomes by playing abroad for parts of the other eight months of the year.

I think they're crazy for pushing the WNBA to the brink of extinction, or, at the very least, jeopardizing a league that has potential and gives younger girls with basketball talent a dream and a goal.

Dissatisfied or not, the women in the WNBA should take what's being offered. They should adopt an approach that mirrors that of the LPGA tour members, which seems to be "Yes, we'd like to be paid more, but this isn't a bad gig.

"And it certainly beats working for a living."