Columnist Dean Juipe: Men looking to be appeased, not threatened

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2003 | 9:04 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.

Careful girls, careful what you wish for. If the separation of the sexes in sports becomes too blurred, it could work against many of the gains women have made in the past 30 years.

I'm talking about Suzy Whaley playing in the PGA Tour's Greater Hartford Open this summer, and the possibility that LPGA star Annika Sorenstam will accept a sponsor's invitation and play on the men's tour this year as well. The PGA Tour's B.C. Open has already extended Sorenstam an invite and is awaiting her response, while Whaley "earned" one by finishing first in a qualifier in which she -- and only she -- was allowed to play from the women's tees against a field of men.

The risk is that Whaley and Sorenstam will be perceived as curiosities or carnival acts gone awry, and that men will rebel in any number of disturbing fashions. They could withdraw their interest as spectators of women's sports, or they could -- in what certainly would be a lengthy and drawn-out protest that might never reach its ultimate goal -- begin a campaign to merge women's and men's sports and dissolve the sexes' separate teams.

You want full equality? Then let's have one team representing UNLV in basketball, baseball, softball, tennis and so on. Or one professional golf tour.

That's a bit extreme, of course, and hardly a possibility right now. Yet don't put it past men to offer some resistance to funding more and more women's programs when athletes such as Whaley and Sorenstam step across the line and tread on ground where many feel they're not wanted.

At the heart of the issue with Whaley, a club pro, and Sorenstam, one of the finest female players ever, is that neither has even a remote chance of winning a PGA Tour event. And, importantly, that their inclusion in a tour-event field eliminates a more deserving male.

It's fine when PGA and LPGA players are matched in Skins games and made-for-TV dollar grabs, but it's quite another when the B.C. Open pulls a publicity stunt and offers Sorenstam a spot that would otherwise be filled by a struggling male player looking to make a living.

This is topical not only with Sorenstam being presented with the B.C. offer this week, but with a 15-person federal commission on Title IX meeting in Washington and finalizing a report due on the desk of Education Secretary Rod Paige next month.

The commission's purpose is to fine tune Title IX, which forbids sexual discrimination at schools receiving federal funds. As many as 24 recommendations are currently on the table, as is a lawsuit filed by a coalition of (male) coaches who oppose some aspects of Title IX as it is currently constituted.

The latter group objects to sports for males being eliminated as a way of achieving parity in terms of male and female participant numbers. Assorted compromises have been presented and will be forwarded to Paige, so a possible solution is in the works.

As for Sorenstam and Whaley, in my view what's going on there is exploitative and moderately offensive to men and women alike.

Of course I feel Augusta National should be allowed to be exclusively male if that's what its membership chooses, so maybe I'm too "old school" for my own good. But the old school has no shortage of members and -- dare I say? -- is potentially vigilant to boot.