Why Golf Helps Women and Other Sports Do Not
A more accurate title for this writing would be: “Gender Bias in Athletics Created by Poor Female Performance in Alike Sports due to Meager and Unequal Coaching at the Development Level”. This is not going to be a discussion of Title IX. This is not going to give reasons why the WNBA will never be as popular as the NBA. This is not going to offer an opinion as to how much athletes of each gender should be paid for their performance in sports. This is not going to explore how sexual exploitation can have an effect on certain sports. (Side note: when researching this piece, I obviously ran into a lot of articles that talked about the previous subjects. Both sides do me a favor, if you are going to make an argument, use statistics that are more recent than 1981. Sports and the money they generate have changed quite a bit in the last 36 years.) This is going to explore why at fundamental levels, women tend to have a worse performance in sports than their male counterparts.
First, let me discuss why I chose to explore this subject, which I know is contentious with many throughout our society. Last year, I took an interest in the Women’s Division I NCAA Basketball Tournament due to the success of the team representing my alma mater, Syracuse University. Although I have always closely followed the Men’s team, I rarely paid attention to the Women’s program because of their lack of success. Prior to last April, the Women’s team had never made it passed the second round of the NCAA Tournament on the rare occasions they did qualify for it. I was not the only one. Since the Men’s and Women’s teams both began using the Carrier Dome as their home facility for basketball games, the stark contrast in attendance had never been more apparent. For the 2015-2016 campaign, a year in which attendance for Men’s home games fell more than 10% from the prior season, the Syracuse Men’s team averaged 23,854 fans versus 752 for the Women. The Men hold the all-time on campus attendance record for a single game of 35,446, while the women could only attract 3,842 fans for an on campus NCAA tournament game.[i] On February 14, 2007, the University offered free tickets, soda, popcorn, and hotdogs to anyone that would attend a Women’s home game against Rutgers University which took place during a brutal winter storm. I, like most people, am not willing to watch a team that is terrible and not associated with the City of Cleveland, Ohio.
In watching the Women’s Final Four last year, I began to notice why I had heard so many stereotypes about Women’s Basketball. (For the record, I rarely watch sports on TV unless I have a vested interest in the game.) The stereotypes I noticed, however, were not ones that I was anticipating. I wasn’t shocked that players were not dunking the basketball or that they were not as fast as their male counterparts; I was appalled by how terrible their fundamentals were. For years, I had heard that when it comes to the fundaments of a sport, Women were just as good, if not better, than Men. This simply was not the case for players on both teams. My focus was drawn to a player that was in the starting lineup for Syracuse’s opponent in the national semi-final game. She couldn’t dribble, pass, or shoot. I don’t mean that she had a few bad shots either; the form of her shooting stroke was dreadful. On multiple occasions, she fired a shot that can best be described as a “line-drive” which hit the top of the backboard, nowhere near the basket. I honestly could not believe that this player was able to earn a basketball scholarship, much less on a team that was competing for the National Championship.
Two days later, Syracuse played the University of Connecticut Women Huskies. Unless you have lived in a cave for the last 20 years, you have no doubt heard about the championships and records set by the team out of Storrs. Since 1995, they have won 11 National Championships. Even though the game was pretty much determined before tip-off, I watched anyway to see if Syracuse could pull off a miracle. They couldn’t, but in doing so, I was able to watch why UConn was so good. All of their players had tremendous fundamentals. Breanna Stewart, their best player, had a shooting stroke that would hold up against the best in the world, regardless of gender. What made her so much better than everybody else?
I began to investigate what the common link was between some of the greatest female athletes of all time. Immediately I noticed that these Women, while all successful, were divided into two categories: those who were considered by fans and the media to be good enough to compete against athletes of any gender and those who were not. I chose to concentrate only on those who could “compete against the Men”. Some of the names I explored included the following: Babe Zaharias, Billy Jean King, Annika Sorenstam, Serena Williams, Lindsey Vonn, Mia Hamm, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and the previously mentioned Brianna Stewart.[ii] What each of these women had in common is that they each received coaching from a top-notch instructor during their developmental stage. For those who are famous for competing in team sports, even though they may have been separated onto different teams from boys during their youth, at some point they attended camps or received private instruction that was mostly only available to boys teams. Those who competed in individual sports received developmental instruction from Professionals at the facilities where they learned their sport (i.e. Golf Professional at a country club). The perceived difference in skill between Men and Women is significantly smaller in sports where it is an individual competing. There are several reasons for this, but the most important is that high-level instruction was available to athletes their age, regardless of gender.
Of the second highest importance is that their sports adjust the playing field to be fair to players of lesser strength, with the exceptions being Tennis and Track. These sports do keep everything the same regardless of gender, but they do not compete against each other. (This is going to be where you start to think about the “Battle of the Sexes” matches in Tennis. Results of these matches are being disregarded because the participants were not of the same caliber at the time of these matches.) What this leaves us with is a comparison between Men and Women in the sport where they are most closely matched, Golf.
At the top professional level, golf courses average 600 yards shorter for the Women, although this can be a bit misleading. Rarely, such as the 2014 US Opens, do the Men and Women compete on the same course in a calendar year. This change is done because Women average less distance than Men with each club. With less distance comes a lower peak height on the trajectory of each club, requiring holes to not be cut in as difficult areas of the greens and green speeds to run slightly slower. Otherwise, the games are fairly similar. The hole is the same size, fairways are generally the same width, and hazards are in the same locations. Statistically, however, the Men have a lower scoring average and fewer putts per green than Women. This can be attributed to three causes.
First, despite being 600 yards shorter on average, the courses Women play on the LPGA Tour may still be too long. As a US Kids Golf Certified Coach, I have become very familiar with setting up golf courses to play an appropriate length for players of difference ages and strength levels. There are currently seven different length recommendations for children of all ages, which are based on the length each player hits their driver. In 2016, the 75th ranked player in driving distance on the LPGA Tour averaged 253.36 yards, while the 75th ranked player on the PGA Tour averaged 292.6 yards.[iii] Let’s assume that the difference in equivalent approach clubs averages a 25 yard difference in distance. That means Women are 65 yards shorter on each hole. Over the course of 18 holes, these two players have a difference of 1170 yards. Second, even though putting is not considered a feat of strength, I want you to consider some advice that you have no doubt heard if you have ever played golf. “Grip the club as light as you can without letting it fly out of your hands”. With greater strength on average, Men would be able to grip the club with less strength than Women. Even though Women’s clubs are manufactured to weigh less, this still may not be enough to make this feat equal between the genders. Lastly, there is a significantly larger amount of Men that play Golf worldwide versus Women. According to the National Golf Foundation, in 2014 4.5 Women played Golf versus 17.2 million Men. Taking the top 150 players to form a tour, there is a much larger pool from which to find those 150 Men than Women.
Whereas the last two points will remain similar based on any sport, the difference in distance highlights problems that exist in other sports. In Basketball for example, Women play with a smaller ball and have a shorter three-point field goal line in college and professional ranks. The basket height and length of court however remain the same. Soccer only has a smaller ball. The statistics in Golf point out that this is probably not enough to create level playing fields in terms of performance. Reducing dimensions in height and length by 20% in all sports for Women would create an equal level of “excitement” which would be equivalent to that perceived in Men’s Sports. If you doubt this, think about how much more exhilarating Women’s Basketball would be if most players at the professional level could dunk?
What does all of this mean? We must change the way in which we coach and setup sports for Women. As a PGA Professional, I welcome players to seek instruction regardless of gender or ability level. I coach young players notwithstanding their gender or skill level. Even at the highest levels, coaches are equally available to teach both PGA and LPGA touring professionals. This cannot be said about all sports. Typically, young female athletes are subjected to inferior coaching when they are first learning their respective sport. At higher levels, better coaches tend to coach Men, as there is more money available for their services. More money can be taken generated by Women’s sport if they compete on a playing field that is equivalent to Men. As Golf has seen a decline in players over the last decade, leading to more golf courses closing than opening in the United States every year since 2006, it has become more important to attract new players to the game. The PGA of America has identified several groups which have had low participation in the sport historically, with Women being the group we are pursuing the most. Each week I receive an email with “Best Practices” to attract new women to the game and retain those we have. Other sports have a similar problem, but have not addressed it with the same fervor. For sports to continue to grow in this country, we must address these problems and correct them by learning from those sports which have been successful in closing the gap between Men and Women.
[i] http://www.syracuse.com/orangewomen/index.ssf/2016/11/syracuse_pushes_to_translate_womens_basketball_success_to_better_attendance.html
[iii] Statistics available on pgatour.com and lpga.com.