Bree wrote: "This brought to mind, Kate,I recently watched a womens golf tournament in which the woman who won was forty something. Well...the darn announcer never let the audience forget. If he brought her age up once, he brought it up a good dozen times. To the point I was getting really annoyed. Now, anybody that knows even a little about the game of golf knows it has as much to do with mental strength as well as the physical side of it too. ( But you know this little old lady of forty could hardly make it round the eighteen holes much less concetrate on her game. How she pulled this off...a miracle...I tell you. This was the guys attitude. ) Same scenario....but if it was a forty something man who won....would his age have had the same focus? ???????"
Sorry, Bree, but I must disagree with you here. The tournament you are probably referring to is the U.S. Women's Open of a few weeks back, won by Juli Inkster at the age of 42. I did not hear most of the commentary, and so don't know the tone in which the references to Inkster's age were delivered. But the fact is, Inkster has enjoyed a remarkable career resurgence in recent years, winning 3 or 4 major championships in her late 30s and early 40s, including this one. And, while golf is indeed a mental as well as a physical game, winning multiple majors after twenty years on tour is not the usual career trajectory for a professional. I see the comments less as sexist or "ageist" than as commending Inkster for a difficult job well done. Announcers have made and do make similar comments about male golfers. In 1998, when Mark O'Meara won both the Masters and the British Open in the same year, quite a lot of attention was given to the fact that he was 41 years old at the time, and that these were his first majors. And as recently as last Sunday, when forty-somethings predominated in the top ten spots at the Greater Milwaukee Open, announcers at ABC went so far as to **post the ages** of all those on the first page of the leaderboard. The tournament was won by Jeff Sluman, whose age of 44 was mentioned half a dozen times if it was mentioned once. OK. Off my soapbox! But you see, golf is my secret passion. ;-) Mary P., who stood no more than 5 feet away from Jack Nicklaus himself last Thursday, a fellow spectator in the gallery following his son Gary in the first round of the GMO.
