Wie: Breaking Barriers
Michelle Wie is achieving what few women have managed - competing in a man dominated professional sport. CNN reports:
Sixteen-year-old Michelle Wie on Friday became the first women to make the cut in a major men’s tour event for 61 years at Incheon, South Korea.
Wie fired four birdies on her way to a three-under 69 in the second round of the Asian Tour’s SK Telecom Open to put at her at five under.
The last woman to make the final two rounds of a senior men’s event was Babe Zaharias at the 1945 Los Angeles Open.
Babe Zaharias did it in another era. That no one managed it till now in golf, since then, is testimonial to the increasing standards in golf, and gives some understanding to what Wie is achieving. Analysts and golf writers say that we might only start understanding what Tiger Woods achieved in golf, the barriers he broke and what he meant to golf only after many years of the Woods retirement.
It will be much more difficult to understand Wie’s greatness as she has no peers - Woods has a Nicklaus to atleast compare to.
Perhaps the only sports person who can compare with Wie would be Judit Polgar. Wiki sums up her accomplishments in stat terms:
Easily the strongest female chessplayer in history, she was ranked number fourteen in the world in the April 2006 FIDE rating list with an ELO rating of 2711, the only woman on FIDE’s Top 100 Players list. She achieved the title of Grandmaster (GM) in 1991 at the age of 15 years and 4 months, beating the previous record for youngest Grandmaster, set by Robert James “Bobby” Fischer in 1958.
Most other sports do not give the opportunity for women and men to compete at an even base as most sports are physically much more demanding - be it ball sports like tennis, winter sports or motor sports (the pressure on a driver in a race is physically very challenging). Perhaps target sports may see a woman compete with the men some day? The physical aspect is very much present in target sports but it is also a game of concentration. Who knows, if some one can come up in some discipline in target sports striding over the physical aspect?
Wie has broken many barriers already but many possibly remain. It promises to be an exciting journey.
Tags: Babe Zaharias, Judit Polgar, Michelle Wie, Tiger Woods, Womens Sport.
