Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: Good old golf. It never fails to provide proof that it is a mad, mad world we live in. It is the year 2003. Only this week, women have walked through raging snowdrifts so they might stand, as Edmund Hillary did 50 years ago, for a brief time above all of humanity.

Women have been to space. Women have fought in wars. Women have fought in bars. Women may still be slower in the 100 metres but the strides they have made over the last century are unimaginable to men. Right now, womankind is a blur, going past bloated and doubting mankind on the final bend. Pick up any newspaper on any day and you will find scientists offering the latest proof that in the endless battle of the sexes, women are on the up. Man is a beaten docket and is all but ready to hand over the controls of the Enterprise.

From time immemorial, women have been fighting history with her-story in all sorts of death-defying and death-embracing feats.

So what is the big deal about a round of 71 against the men? What is happening at Fort Worth has really very little to do with Annika Sorenstam and everything to do with the prevailing attitudes in the wacky world of golf. Although it can sometimes be gripping and occasionally - in spite of itself - noble and moving, golf is mostly a bad joke.

If you wanted to demonstrate to a visiting, alien life form everything that is wrong about earth, you could do worse than to take it around three random golf clubs and maybe a men's tour event for good measure. Of course, the critter may find it difficult to gain entry into several of the establishments you might consider touring.

It is well known that many clubhouses have strict policies on small, funny looking creatures with high-pitched voices and strange walks - Ian Woosnam notwithstanding.

But the point is that you could explain how golf is a hothouse for the sinister forces of sexism, racism, nepotism, elitism and the Argyle design on one fine afternoon. And you could demonstrate that the lower you sink into the world of golf, the more prevalent are these forces. Any obscure and frankly rubbish golf course in any dreary suburb you care to mention is likely to stink with self- importance and archaic rules.

And you could say it is typical of golf's perverse nature that those who rise to the untouchable heights of the game are often from hard-working and honest backgrounds that contradict all received knowledge that golf is merely a global badge for those with obscene wealth.

It makes you scratch your head because you know that those who control golf really just desire it as a Masonic club for the gilded class but that somehow sport keeps getting in the way. You point at the ordinary Joes like Justin Campbell or Rich Beem or even John Daly and you tell your little alien Woosie, who is by now wearing a peaked cap and Payne Stewart pants, that these people are the saviours of golf.

Or at least they were until Thursday. Judging by the commentary on Sorenstam's inaugural round on the US tour, it was a day that will be talked about in 50 and 100 years' time.

I don't get it. Two and three months ago and long before, Sorenstam was the best female golfer on the planet by a country mile. She blew her peers out of the water and was becoming bored and frustrated by the lack of competition. Her name would appear in small - very small - headlines after she won yet another event.

You don't have to be an expert on women's golf to make the assumption that anyone regarded as a phenomenon in that arena in all probability excelled at the game.

So Sorenstam turns up at Fort Worth and plays a really fine game and suddenly the airwaves of golf are crackling with talk of a bright and wonderful revolution.

Observed in isolation, what Sorenstam achieved on Thursday was certainly eye-opening. To take the course, with Vijay Singh's ugly words still ringing in her ears, and to perform so steadily under such a tremendous weight of expectation took the composure of a champion. But that is exactly what Sorenstam is.

The reaction to her round suggests that many of the cognoscenti of the male tour really had no clue that she could actually play - or at least did not appreciate that her game was not demonstrably different from that practised by the top male players.

The thing is, when you look at Sorenstam, the fact she is a woman is not what immediately strikes you. It is the fact she is an athlete. She has the unmistakable look of those that could play any sport. How many golfers on the male circuit could you honestly say that about? The reaction to Sorenstam has been puzzling. It is as if the golfing fraternity was blown away by the fact Mary Poppins had not shown up to play.

The reportage of her historic round, while glazed in admiration that seems genuine, is also uncomfortably close to condescension.

Needless to say, the majority of sports journalists covering what in Sorenstam's absence would be a run-of-the-mill tour pay-day event are male. The fawning over Sorenstam's accuracy on the fairways, her consistency to the greens and her general shrewdness would be fine if it were not for the fact the marvel seems to be that she could do this in the company of men.

She is the best in the world at what she does. Even if she was playing on the unknown territory of a longer and tougher course mapped for male players and dealing with the maelstrom of publicity that went with that, surely her formidable reputation and ability were always going to count for something. What it boiled down to was a particularly skilful and proven golfer playing on a tougher course. And a Swedish golfer at that - everyone knows Swedes are incapable of suffering from nerves.

But it seems as if Sorenstam could only validate whatever brilliance she possesses in translation. From where I am sitting, all the lavish praise, all the whooping and sound of male hand-clapping, is phoney.

After all, what has changed? If Sorenstam made the cut last night, then interest in the tournament will probably skyrocket.

There are those among golf's inner sanctum that will celebrate, some that will pay lip service and some that will regard it as a dark day. But there is no guarantee she will be invited to play in future events and even if she does, the novelty will soon wear off.

In a way, the whole adventure is a bit dispiriting. It has taken this bold step by Sorenstam to gain acceptance and recognition from her own.

By shaming and showing, she has forced the golfing world into an admission that boils down to little more than a low whistle followed by a "yup, she sure is somethin', for a woman".

Golf. Golf doesn't change. It's a man's world, and the bitchiest of them all.