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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.
