By comparison with their male counterparts, golf's women professionals face a decidedly uphill battle in attempting to gain their share of the endorsement market: Tiger Woods will make more off the course this year than all of the LPGA Tour players put together.
Put another way, of the estimated $400 million which will be spent on golf endorsements worldwide this year, less than 10 per cent will go to women professionals. As veteran Amy Alcott put it: "You get the feeling you have to roll over and bite yourself after you shoot 60, to get attention."
Another observer countered: "Women golfers using men's clubs doesn't sell equipment to either men or women." She can play, but can she sell, is the question leading corporate representatives ask. So far, even gallery darlings such as Annika Sorenstam seem incapable of inspiring a positive answer. Perhaps these suits should note the words of PG Wodehouse, who claimed that: "Golf humanises women, humbles their haughty natures, tends, in short, to knock out of their systems a certain modicum of the superciliousness, that swank, which makes wooing a tough proposition for the diffident male."
This day in golf history . . . on February 17th, 1952, Jackie Burke completed a 24under-par aggregate of 260, one stroke off the American tour record, when winning the Texas Open on the Brackenridge Park course in San Antonio. On the same date three years later, Mike Souchak shot an opening round of 60 in the same event on the same course, en route to a tour record 257, which was beaten only recently by Mark Calcavecchia in the Phoenix Open.
Teaser: In a match, A begins to search for his ball, finds a ball which he believes to be his opponent's ball and resumes his search. Five minutes elapse without his finding and identifying his ball. Thereafter, it is discovered that the ball which he found and believed to be his opponent's, was in fact his ball. What is the ruling?
Answer: Since A did not identify a ball as his within five minutes after search for it began, A's ball was lost.
