Saturday, May 24, 2003

Amidst all the controversy over Annika Sorenstam's abortive attempt to take the PGA tour by storm, I have seen surprisingly few comments on her rather unusual reaction to her weak performance: "I've got to go back to my tour, where I belong....I'm glad I did it, but this is way over my head....I wasn't as tough as I thought I was."

I simply can't imagine any top-level male professional athlete responding this way after failing in his first attempt to break into a new, higher tier of competition. More likely, he'd declare that he'd learned a lot from his defeat, and was looking forward to doing much better in his next try. If he announced that he was way out of his depth and planned in the future just to stick to his proper level, where he "belonged", he'd be derided as a wimp, a quitter, a loser.

Now, the whole point of having a blog is to be able to say whatever you want, so even though I just know I'm going to get pilloried for saying this, I'll say it anyway: I, too, would have looked down on Sorenstam's reaction had it been from a male athlete. But coming from her....well, I thought it was kind of endearing.

So there. Vive la difference!

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