Sweeping generalizations about female golfers piss me off, but I’m used to them.
John Huggan, who usually writes such thoughtful and interesting golf articles, put up a rare sensational piece in which he says coach David Whelan is “making great strides towards closing what is perhaps the biggest gender gap in golf.” Baloney. David Whelan is making sweeping generalizations about female golfers to get himself some attention and John Huggan gave him the vehicle.
First of all, that gender gap to which he is referring is the short game – everything from 100 yards and in. I think we all know that’s not the biggest gender gap in golf. That would be the long game. Okay, you caught me. Some sweeping generalizations are true.
Second, if we’re talking about a real gender gap in golf, that includes the millions of golfers who don’t play professionally. Not just the elite on tour. From my experience playing with amateur women and men, short games are created equal. Interest, focus, training and experience all factor into whether a person plays well inside 100 yards. Not gender.
Whelan’s whole spiel is about training women (he seems to prefer the term “girls”) on the short game. If they pay more attention to that part of the game, they’ll get better at it. Wow, maybe he read a book! But to get himself noticed, he thought it would be a good idea to say that not only are women worse at the short game than men, but that it’s because they are women. Maybe he is a good technical coach but his social and communication skills are primitive. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want her in his camp (the David Leadbetter Golf Academy in Florida).
Huggan points out a more reasonable explanation: “Another factor in the relatively poor short games on the LPGA Tour is the level of facilities typically available to the players.” And he supports it with Whelan’s own observations:
“When I started working with Paula, she was a 15-year-old amateur who was getting invites to events where there were no chipping greens or pitching areas. Even at the Nabisco event, which is a major, there is still no chipping green.”
But it goes downhill from there:
“So bad technique around the greens is the biggest thing holding the girls back. That and a constant reassurance that they have to hit balls all day. A lot of them feel that, if they don’t hit a lot of balls, then they don’t deserve to play well.”
So you see, their girly lack of self confidence and perhaps the pressure of the REAL gender gap is causing them to spend too much time on their long games, thus creating the short game gender gap. Silly girls! So let’s undermine them some more and give them a new way to feel inferior, because we wouldn’t want to hold them back. Too bad the only support for his assertion is a stat related to putting, not chipping or pitching:
“Look at the stats. A 29 putts per round average barely gets you into the top 100 on the PGA Tour; on the LPGA Tour, that number has you in the top 30.”
And isn’t it funny there is no mention of the difference in the putting greens on the courses the men and women play. And too bad the good point is buried in the middle of the article surrounded by all the other crap:
“You have to be more ‘softly softly’ with girls, and they need more encouragement. They seem to lack self-confidence. So that needs to be instilled in them early. They are competitive, though. They hate to get beat. Which is a good thing.
There’s that “girls need more encouragement” statement again. At least he gets one thing right: self-confidence does need to be instilled in them early. Then they need to stay away from him so it doesn’t get talked out of them.
“Still, it’s a lot easier to work with the guys than the girls. You can work with more men than women. For example, the men aren’t as bothered about me watching them play. The girls like me to watch. They are convinced that there is something happening out there that isn’t on the range.”
Then go back to working with the guys. The girls like you to watch? Are you sure you’re focusing on their short games and not their short skirts? Do you have pillow-fight drills in your sessions just to hammer home what girls are really good for? For a guy who used to play professionally, you sure don’t seem to remember that there is a difference between working on the range and playing in an event or even just a casual round. It’s called the mental game. Maybe they want you to identify what their weaknesses are when they’re under pressure so they can work on those. The men probably figure that you’ll be watching anyway since they’re on TV. At least I assume you’re talking about the pros when you mention “men” and the kids from the academy when you mention the “girls.” Oh wait, you were just talking about the pros, right? Well, many of those “girls” get about as much TV coverage as the kids do anyway. Plus they know you’ll be watching that other channel with the REAL golf.
The short game is important – revolutionary! Gee, your instruction methods focus on the short game. How unique. Wow, you work with some big names like Paula Creamer, Catriona Matthew, Aree and Naree Song and Rachel Hetherington. Too bad you had to act like such a caveman while getting the word out.
Huggan makes a reasonable observation about the golfers he has watched lately and that the women’s short games weren’t as good as the men’s. I can accept that. He sees what he sees. But to broaden it into a sport-wide gender gap by giving it the sensational title “Why women can’t match men even with the putter” and support the idea with one coach’s idiotic ramblings that basically amount to “because they’re girls”? I’m inspired. I’m going to go hold up the fast lane as I put mascara on while I drive to the golf course to play really slowly and ignore the rules and etiquette.
August 21, 2007 at 9:28 pm
GC,
Well said. I agree it looks like David is looking to make a name for himself. I am sure you have one for him, but I won’t spoil your next blog. John must of had a No News day when he chose to report on this subject. And Mission Hills had a chipping green at the Nabisco …I stood there and watch Paula nailing 50 footers..what is he talking about?
I would hope that this attitude would go away, but I guess it is going to take a few more years to clear these guys off the planet… I support the women of golf and the girls who will become the women of golf..let me know how I can help.
August 21, 2007 at 10:10 pm
That’s exactly what I wanted to say, but couldn’t muster up the self-confidence…guess I need to spend some time with coach Whelan. ;o)
August 22, 2007 at 12:00 am
Hi Golfchick,
I’m new to blogging and don’t want to step on any toes. Hope I don’t, but
I took the article in a completely different way. I didn’t think he was blaming their practice routines on the fact that they were woment, but the fact that the “culture” of competitive womens’s golf is to beat balls on the range while letting the short game come second (especially among young Koreans, apparently). Women seem to play at the national level a lot sooner than men, and maybe when they get to those higher levels they see their peers (other women)hitting range balls. This leads to the thinking that in order to compete at those levels, they should do the same and hit a ton of balls.
I don’t know, I haven’t been around women’s golf enough, but I think you mis-took the arguments. Putting boys in the same situation early in their developement would seem to have the same effect on self-esteem and practice habits.
EB
August 22, 2007 at 12:47 am
I think we agree that it was pretty much a throw away article, we disagree on the point of the article.
Huggan and Whelan both stipulated that the long game will pretty much always favor the men – but what SHOULD be an equality among men and women really isn’t.
Whalen coaches mostly professionals, which wasn’t pointed out, so it would be a safe assumption that he was talking about better players and pros. His evidence was mostly anecdotal, so it would be difficult to make an absolute from what he said – but if you watch the women pros do and what the men pros do, you will see that he is correct.
When Annika Sorenstam played the Colonial a few years back, the first thing she said about playing and practicing with the men was the amount of time spent on the short game.
I have caddied at a few LPGA events and have noticed the same things. The women stay on the range, then pull out the putter around the green and do a little work there, but the majority of the time is spent on the range.
If you are talking about mid and high handicappers…the short game is hit and hope for the most part on both sides of the gender line.
My guess is that Huggan has had this article laying around for a while and needed to turn something in.
Enjoy your blog – good stuff !
August 22, 2007 at 1:00 am
Courtney – I actually did see that point in the article, but it was just such a poorly stated argument in a convoluted article that it was hard to find and unconvincing. And Whelan made it with such a derogatory tone that I had to pick it apart. Perhaps a better way to state it would be “people who practice the short game more are better at it than those who don’t and I’ve witnessed that a lot of women don’t work on it enough.” But then that would be obvious with no sensational value and no point for an article.
I also bet you’re right about Huggan needing something to turn in.
EB – see above regarding perception of the argument. And self esteem is only a girly problem, dontcha know. Don’t worry about my toes!
Scot – I believe my name for him was “caveman.”
Patricia – sounds like you’ve already spent too much time with Whelan’s of the world! 😉
August 24, 2007 at 12:23 am
Living in St.Andrews , I was REALLY looking forward to the Britiah Open this year , but after day one I had seen more slow play than I could take .
Short games ?
I am still shaking my heid yet , at what I saw !
August 24, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Golfchick,
By the way you’ve shot down every other comment that challenges your conclusion, (plus your reactionary response to the article in the first place) I’d say you’ve got an us/them chip on your shoulder that’s keeping your from seeing any perspective on this but your own. “Lady pros don’t practice their short games enough”–what’s so misogynistic about that?
August 24, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Duck – Nothing at all. If only he’d said it that way.
August 24, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Mr Duck,
As Golf Chick as eloquently reported, Mr Whalen feels “Girls” will never be any good at the short game because they are “Girls”. That is just simply not true. I am not sure of your level of experience with actually witnessing the amount of time the women professionals practice their short game, but if you were to look into these ladies bags as I have you will see the grooves on their many wedges are all pretty worn out. Wonder how they got that way? If Golf Girl has a chip on her shoulder so do I.
August 26, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Fine–you, too, have a chip. Huggan clearly states women aren’t good with the short game because of ineffective practice routines. Any anti-women sentiment you attribute to the article is your baggage, not his.