Women Drivers

It is unlikely he has ever been there, but the Fijian golfer, Vijay Singh, would no doubt approve of the sign which used to hang in the clubhouse of a fabled golf course in Scotland. "Lady members," the sign read, "shall give way to gentlemen members at all times, except after 4pm between October and April."

To a game mired in the murk of an autumnal evening, whose attitude to women has long made Fred Flintstone look the apogee of the new man, Vijay Singh has added a new chapter of gracelessness. Discovering that the Swedish golfer Annika Sorenstam had been invited to compete in a men's tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, this week, Vijay spluttered the sort of outraged snort a colonial colonel might have done learning that Indian chaps had taken to the fairways. And not just as caddies. It was a disgrace, he said, a joke, a publicity stunt demeaning the American tour. Allowing Sorenstam to play meant depriving a deserving man of his rightful place in the competition. It was as good as taking food from his plate. He then promptly made himself unavailable for the competition. Not, he insisted because of Sorenstam's presence, that really didn't bother him at all, but because he had other things to do. Boldly challenging the stereotype of unreconstructed chauvinist that many were anxious to settle on him, he said that he had promised to take his wife shopping instead.

Blustering as he may have been, Singh was not the only professional golfer to express displeasure at the idea of a woman playing the men's game. Nick Price, the Zimbabwean who won the same Bank of America Colonial tournament last year, said it should not be allowed. And the Canadian Brian Kontak went into battle for downtrodden males everywhere when he said he was going to make a legal challenge to overturn the ruling by the governing body of women's golf, the LPGA, which precludes men from playing on the women's tour. It is, he said, an unutterably unfair piece of sexism that women are now playing on the men's tour but not vice versa. Unlike, of course, the Royal & Ancient, or the Augusta National, the home of the US Masters, institutions which, in their refusal to allow lady members, are merely upholding tradition.

What is it that has made these men so alarmed by Sorenstam's arrival in their midst? Were they simply worried about an assumed devaluing of their competition? Were they anxious that history was under threat? Surely it can't be that they see women getting increasingly close to their performance and are keen to retain barriers to prevent a sudden surge of competition from the distaff side?

Well, maybe. There is growing evidence that, in a number of sports, female breath is being felt growing ever warmer on male collars. When she won in April in London, setting a new world women's record, Paula Radcliffe was fast enough to have won the men's Olympic gold medal in every games until 1984 - and to have qualified for the Great Britain men's Olympic marathon team for 2004. But then we should have realised that; after all, she beat every British man who entered the race by such a distance they all needed binoculars just to catch sight of her back.

Meanwhile, Emma Richards recently joined Ellen MacArthur in the record books, skimming round the globe quicker than virtually any male solo sailor has ever managed, docking back at the end of the Around Alone race last month as the youngest ever competitor of either sex to complete the race. And only yesterday, in the less exotic, though possibly no less damp, environs of Bath race course, Lisa Jones, an apprentice jockey, won the 3.15. This wasn't a backwater race competed by has-beens and never-will-bes, either. She beat the champion jockey Kieron Fallon into third place.

In truth, it is in competitions that do not involve much in the way of brute strength that women are really closing the gap. In the sports that value determination, stamina and endurance above muscle, they stand almost on an equal footing. It is a revealing fact of swimming, for instance, that while over a thrash of say 50 metres there really is no contest, across the 22 miles of the English channel, women can cover the great divide just as quickly as men.

And in equestrian sports, the sexes compete in the same disciplines at the same time. Not that it is easy for women. The American jockey, Julie Krone, who rode 3,545 winners in an 18-year career and was the first women to win a classic, reckons she faced prejudice every day she was racing. So fierce was it that she was whipped, punched and kicked by rival jockeys. Only after she had laid out a lippy horseman called Joe Bravo, removing three of his front teeth with an uppercut that Roy Jones Junior would have envied, did the physical intimidation stop.

"Prejudice against female riders is still out there," says John Forbes, Krone's former trainer. "I don't think it will ever go away. The notion that a rider has to be very strong and powerful so he can control a 1,000lb animal and hit it really hard with a whip is something that has been ingrained. The resistance we had was unbelievable."

Krone claims every day was a battle to prove her worth. "I learned to climb into people's hearts like you can't believe," she says. "I worked so hard to - we will use the term loosely - seduce people. But whether you're a girl or a boy or a Martian, you still have to prove yourself. In professional sports, they don't give you anything for nothing."

There are plenty of observers who would suggest many of the women who have achieved big things in sport have been obliged to work far harder than any comparable man. Radcliffe is a case in point. Her attention to detail in the way she goes about training, her diet and her mental conditioning have set standards men are having quickly to copy. And Sorenstam is the same - a golfer whose approach is matched by very few of the players on the men's tour.

Even so, such is the need for shoulders and forearms to wallop a golf ball down the fairway, Vivian Saunders, a former British women's open champion doubts whether, for all her talents, Sorenstam offers any genuine sort of challenge for male golfers. "She is much more slim and lithe than previous top women golfers, who were built a bit like a tank, so she has shown that timing and technique can compensate a lot for lack of muscle. But however good their swing, however good their clubs are, there is always going to be a strength issue. Women simply will never be able to hit the ball as hard as men."

So why, if Sorenstam is not expected to survive to the second round of this week's tournament, have the male players got so shirty?

"It's not so much a men v women thing," reckons Saunders, "it's an old fart thing. It's about snobbery and the game not progressing. I understand what Vijay means, there is a shortage of spaces on the tour. But it's been very good marketing for the tournament. It's got everybody talking about it - which is a very good thing."

Particularly if it sheds light on the lingering sexism in the game, which has long prevented women even from doing their own thing.

"I don't think it's feasible for men and women to play together, never have," says Saunders. "What I want is for them to be treated equally. I mean, it's ridiculous that the Royal & Ancient, which claims it is the governing body of the sport across the world outside America and Mexico, does not allow women members. On its executive committee it has women sitting in as non-voting observers, so Clare Downing, the chair of the LPGA, doesn't get a vote, whereas Prince Andrew does. And frankly, he knows bugger all about golf."

In the end, it is probably as well for his peace of mind that Singh tactfully withdrew, rather than loudly boasting about how much he would beat Sorenstam by. Perhaps he has learned a lesson from a sportsman who previously deliberately provoked a sporting battle of the sexes. Almost 30 years ago to the day, a shouty American former professional tennis player called Bobby Riggs told the world that, even though he was in his 50s, such was the fraudulent lack of ability in the women's game, he could mash any woman on the planet. His challenge was taken up by Billie Jean King, the Serena Williams of her day, a woman whose grip on her profession was total. In a hastily arranged one-off game of mixed singles back in 1973, played before 25,000 in New York, Riggs decided merely arriving on court would not make his point sufficiently loudly. So he arrived aboard a golden rickshaw, pulled by six curvy models dressed in outfits so minimalist they appeared to have been applied by spray can. Charmingly, he referred to his pneumatic entourage as "Bobby's bosom buddies". If it was intended to debilitate his rival psychologically, it failed miserably. King, barely breaking sweat, walloped him 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Afterwards, when he regained his breath, he told reporters: "She was playing well within herself and I couldn't get the most out of my game. It was over too quickly. She was too good. She played too well. It really wasn't a fair contest."