The PGA of Australia and the WPGA needs to be congratulated on their initiative in selling the sport of golf over the previous few years by staging occasions involving each female and male golfers.
They’ve performed it in a number of methods – by presenting vital excursions for each female and male professionals, by staging occasions the place women and men play separate tournaments, like they do within the Australian Open, and by permitting women and men to compete for a similar prize pool, as within the Webex sequence.
They’ve additionally supplied a platform for disabled golfers and for juniors, although it’s a possibility that hasn’t actually been taken up by both of these segments.
However maybe now’s the time to take a deep breath, evaluation how the experiment has gone thus far, and make a couple of modifications earlier than any additional harm is finished.
I get pleasure from watching girls play golf and marvel at their ability, their skill to seemingly by no means play a false stroke, and the model and pleasure they convey to our sport. I’d simply as quickly watch an LPGA match as a PGA or DP World Tour occasion.
And I’m going to be actually irritated if I’m accused of being chauvinistic after I say that there are too many ladies taking over spots within the Webex tournaments performed in Australia over this summer season.
Thailand teenager Choicheva Wongras challenged on the Webex Gamers Collection Murray River occasion, earlier than ending one shot wanting the playoff.
The format for the Webex Collection is that there are 64 spots for male professionals, 64 for feminine professionals (although the complete allocation will not be all the time crammed), 10 for invited gamers and 6 for elite amateurs. That makes up a typical discipline of 144 gamers, with no provision for anyone to attempt to pre-qualify.
The culling course of for the lads is so extreme that achieved professionals like Steven Jeffress, Jay Mackenzie, Shae Wools-Cobb, Anthony Choat and even Andre Stolz, the undisputed king of the older brigade, couldn’t make the sector for the Webex Murray River occasion at first of February.
Nor may any of the rising brigade of proficient younger professionals like Damon Stephenson, Riley Taylor, Zach Ion and Blaike Perkins. Worse nonetheless, they didn’t actually have a probability of enjoying their approach into the sector.
The choice course of was the identical for the Webex Gamers Collection Victoria in late January, an occasion received by the veteran Michael Wright. Females had been supplied 64 locations within the discipline, with 61 of these spots being taken up.
The golfers who crammed the final 20 locations within the discipline – that’s, those that had been the poorest-performed of the 84 who did not make the 36-hole lower – had been all females. The ladies did just a little higher within the Murray River occasion, however nonetheless crammed 18 of the final 24 locations.
I’m not going to embarrass anyone by naming them, or by conducting a public evaluation of their {golfing} historical past, however it’s honest to say the achievements up to now of most of them might be described as modest.
Veteran Michael Wright was a winner of the Rosebud Victorian Webex Collection occasion.
Among the feminine professionals, and one or two of the amateurs, have carried out splendidly nicely over the summer season. Thailand’s Choicheva Wongras, Cassie Porter, Ashley Lau, Kirsten Rudgeley, Robyn Choi, Abbie Teasdale, Kathryn Norris, Jazy Roberts and younger Lion Higo have all been in competition and their presence has enhanced the occasions during which they participated.
I do know that Sarah Jane Smith received the TPS Murray River in 2022 in opposition to the lads, and that Hannah Inexperienced received the identical occasion the earlier 12 months. Despite the fact that these wins had been very a lot in opposition to the stream, I thrilled at them, and I’m not advocating that ladies not be allowed to compete in opposition to the lads.
What I’m suggesting is that there needs to be fewer of them, and that they need to should have reached a sure degree of skill, efficiency and expertise earlier than they make the sector.
I acknowledge the argument that enjoying in opposition to stronger opposition may also help much less skilled opponents study and enhance. I simply don’t suppose a televised $250,000 match on Australia’s largest skilled tour is the place to begin the schooling course of.
The Australasian Tour is now having fun with a world profile and it’s important that it continues to draw wholesome galleries, enthusiastic tv audiences, and an growing variety of elite abroad gamers.
It should have a higher probability of reaching these targets if our precedence was to make sure our occasions are contested by the perfect out there expertise, decided not by the gender of the entrants however by their potential skill to win a match.
