When women play men

Just continuing on the recent performance of Annika in Golf, where she played in a PGA tour, I was discussing with a Swedish collegue who actually follows golf more closely than I do. According to him, even though she had about 20 yards less in her tee-shot, but she was able to make it up but what let her down were the approach shorts, short game and the putting. These had to do more with technical golf rather than brute force.

So, we were discussing that Annika, being the top woman golfer in the world, was 94th in a PGA tour which didn’t even include all the top men players. And if its not so much as the power of the first tee-shot, then does it really boil down to the fact that female golfers have less technical ability in pure golfing terms than men?

Not only in Golf, but in other sports. Ok, so we discount athletics and other sports which rely more on physical force (like soccer, basketball, tennis etc), what about simple games as chess, pool/billairds, bowling etc. I have heard of no female chess master who beats Kasparov regularly or women getting the upper hand in top pool tournaments. There is no physical force involved. These are games of skill and technique. Whats stopping women from playing men in these sports and prove superior technique. I am not sure, cz I don’t follow all these sports very closely.

Are sportswomen basically less capable than sportsmen? What are your views?

Very good point Faisal. Well first of all in the case of Annika you should also take into consideration that she was playing under a lot of pressure. The whole world had their eyes set on her. I think she did fairly well and had she not been under so much pressure she might have done better.

Secondly I think tradionally women have been playing sepratley and the champions have not really been pushed too hard. I think if given the chance to compete regularly in all sports we might see some women rise to the occasion but nonetheless as we see around us this is a male dominated society and I dont see any thing changing in that regard. I beleive that man does have a better ablity to rise to the challenge not cause they are smarter, I think it's simply boils down to nerves. I think a man can hold on to his nerves better than a woman and that simply is the basic difference.