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Foursome powering women's sports
While the men lag, Michelle Wie, Serena Williams, Annika Sorenstam and Danica Patrick are pushing
women's sports to the forefront
By Kyle Hightower
Sentinel Staff Writer
June 23, 2005
Annika. Danica. Serena. Wie.
For these elite female athletes today, one name has become sufficient.
Annika Sorenstam is on the cusp of LPGA history. Danica Patrick is the most talked-about race-car
driver in the world. Serena Williams is back on her favorite playing surface and is competing for her
third Wimbledon title. And Michelle Wie is the can't-miss prodigy who some day wants to play in the
Masters.
Turn on the nearest television set this week, and you almost certainly will see one of the four
enthralling the nation.
And experts such as Women's Sports Foundation Executive Director Donna Lopiano say this fantastic
four represents how far women's sports have come. Women are getting more headlines and forcing
their way into the American sports spotlight.
"I think one of the reasons why some of the tennis players, golfers and drivers are captivating to even
the male fan is because men drive cars, men play tennis and men swing golf clubs," said longtime TV
analyst Mary Carillo.
Whether held down by ongoing or impending labor disputes, bad luck or a just a down year all around,
male pro sports have sagged in 2005.
Steroids have tainted baseball, and the NBA Finals have failed to capture the nation's attention, with
ratings through the first four games down 35 percent from 2004, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Jon Mandel, chairman of MediaCom ad agency, said that a labor dispute has resulted in the National
Hockey League "disappearing from the consciousness of American sports."
Meanwhile, the women seem poised to raise their profiles.
"It's always about teams, players and story lines," ABC Sports spokesman Mark Mandel said, a
reference to the NBA's dip in ratings that could just as easily be applied to this weekend's opportunity
for the women.
And the women have been compelling. For example, the presence of the 23-year-old Patrick helped the
Indy 500's ratings jump nearly 40 percent from 2004 and gave the event its best numbers in almost a
decade.
"Obviously, there is a more emotional connection when a discriminated group overcomes barriers as
opposed to the fourth no-hitter in a row," Lopiano said. "It brings resiliency of spirit into play. It's a
great social story."
Best of the best
One of those stories is that Sorenstam is arguably the most dominant golfer -- male or female -- on the
planet. She was the winner of the first two LPGA majors this season and six of the eight tournaments
she has entered in 2005.
Among active pro golfers only Tiger Woods matches Sorenstam's nine career major titles.
It's no surprise that she is the favorite to win the U.S. Women's Open, which begins today at historic
Cherry Hills Country Club in Cherry Hills Village, Colo.
A victory would leave her one major short of becoming the first woman to win all four majors in the
same year, with July's Women's British Open left on the schedule.
And though she's yet to win an IndyCar race, Patrick's fourth-place finish in her first Indianapolis 500
last month -- the highest finish ever at Indy by a female driver -- was the kind of must-see TV moment
usually reserved for the men.
The Wimbledon draw set up a possible fourth-round meeting between sisters Serena and Venus
Williams. This comes just two years after a stretch in which the pair met in five out of six Grand Slam
tournament finals.
Venus won Wimbledon titles in 2000 and 2001, but she since has fallen into a Grand Slam drought, with
her last Grand Slam victory coming at the 2001 U.S. Open.
Serena, the 2005 Australian Open champion, has reached three consecutive Wimbledon finals, winning
in 2002 and 2003 before losing to Maria Sharapova last year.
And then there is 15-year-old Wie. Still an amateur, her charge and subsequent runner-up finish to
Sorenstam at this year's LPGA Championship (lost by three strokes) was reminiscent of a youthful
Woods.
She also finished tied for second in the season-opening SBS Open at Turtle Bay Resort.
Had she been a professional and eligible to receive prize money, Wie would have earned $164,385 for
her LPGA Championship finish, bringing her 2005 LPGA earnings to $294,920 in just four events.
Winners attract audience
"Some sports just give men a very honest, gut-checking appreciation," Carillo said. "When they see
women perform at extreme levels in golf, they can marvel at it. Annika is a remarkable golfer. There
shouldn't even be a [gender] qualifier anymore."
Carillo, who played on the WTA circuit from 1977 to 1980 and won a French Open mixed-doubles tennis
title with John McEnroe, said the "seminal moment" of her childhood was watching Billie Jean King
defeat Bobby Riggs in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes.
During her career as an analyst, Carillo has been able to see excellence over a gambit of sports --
including eight Olympics, several Final Fours and hundreds of tennis events.
She said the gap between men and women is shrinking -- thanks in part to the elite performances of
more athletes today -- but is still too wide.
"Only sometimes does it happen that women are the main story," she said. "In my sport, there is still
more men's than women's tennis on TV. [But] ratings in women's tennis have been much higher than the
men in recent years."
Though the "old boy network" has dissipated some over time in the process to encourage equality among
the sexes, big-time sports still seem to be the final frontier of unabashed maleness, Lopiano says.
If Sorenstam accomplishes the LPGA Grand Slam or Patrick claims her first IndyCar event, it will
merit mention among the top women's sports moments in history. But on a list that would have to
include icons and barrier breakers such as King, Wilma Rudolph and Katherine Switzer, just where their
exploits would rank isn't as clear.
"By definition, it is a first-time event that captures the attention of the public and media," Lopiano
said. "I think Annika has two roles here. One, obviously, is that she is the Tiger Woods of women's golf.
Add to that she is just like Danica Patrick or any athlete who has tested themselves in women's sports."
Despite all her LPGA success, Sorenstam largely is defined by her decision to test her skills against
the men at the PGA's Bank of America Colonial in 2003.
Playing in the PGA event brought some criticism for Sorenstam, but the support of the Women's Sports
Foundation, among other groups.
Founded in 1974 by King, the WSF is a charitable educational organization dedicated to ensuring equal
access to and participation in sports for all girls and women.
Lopiano, a sociologist, admits she tends to come from that perspective when she thinks about the top
women sports moments.
"It also has to have historical or social significance," she said. "I look at Battle of Sexes, it was social
significance, it disintegrated the myth that women would fold under pressure.
"The [1999] Women's World Cup team -- they [players] did that in the edifice of soccer, [in front of
90,185 fans] in a football stadium. That disintegrated the myth they can't get the same crowds and
importance as men's sports."
Sorenstam and recent Sports Illustrated cover girl Patrick are by no means the first women to make
headway in the male sports world.
But unlike their predecessors, their milestones might do what has been rare for a female athlete:
provide a lasting impact that extends beyond their gender.
"She didn't get to this level by just hoping she could play well," Woods told reporters at news
conference as he prepared for last week's U.S. Open.
"She went out and worked and took it to another level."
Daughters of Title IX
It is not only a function of their extreme talents, Lopiano said, but proof that the landmark 1972
passage of Title IX is "producing critical mass." Signed by President Richard Nixon, the law prohibited
gender discrimination in sports and paved the way for female athletes to compete.
More than 30 years later, Sorenstam, Patrick, Williams and Wie are the daughters of that law. And
with every swing or rev they make, they are reaching plateaus that those of LPGA founder Babe
Didrikson Zaharias' generation probably never thought were attainable.
By far the most-lauded recent example of a moment that has provided lasting influence for female
athletes was the 1999 Women's World Cup team -- their joy forever captured in Brandi Chastain's
famous shirtless celebration.
The game at the Rose Bowl attracted the largest crowd ever to view a women's sports event. It not
only helped spawn the Women's United Soccer Association two years later (it folded in 2003) but also
brought throngs of young women to the sport.
The National Federation of State High School Associations' survey of the 2002-03 school year
reported about 52 percent of the 18,000 schools surveyed were offering girls soccer. In the early
1990s, the sport was offered in about 25 percent of the approximately 17,000 schools at the time.
"It was magnificent and like lightning in a bottle, yes, but it gave us a glimpse of what could really be,
what could really happen to women in sports," said ABC News' Robin Roberts.
Until she came to Florida when she was about 12 years old, Danielle Fotopoulos never had played on an
all-girls soccer team. Growing up in Pennsylvania, she said a girl was lucky to find a co-ed team.
A member of that historic '99 team, she said the magnitude of the moment didn't crystallize until much
later.
"At the time, you don't understand what's going on," Fotopoulos said. "Then you just hear stories after
stories of what it meant to so many people. To have older women, who didn't have the opportunity, come
up to us and say 'Thank you.' It's special. I think it was a pivotal point for soccer and women's sports."
A founding member of WUSA, Fotopoulos said that, six years later, mothers and daughters alike still
are sharing their memories of '99 with her. It gives her hope that her own 4-year-old daughter, Alexia,
never will have to endure the glass ceilings in sports that past generations have.
She said that the most noticeable change today is that professional female coaches are educating
today's girls. Fotopoulos didn't get that until she was 18 years old. Today's generation gets it as young
as age 4.
One of those professionals is 1988 Olympic gymnast Brandy Johnson, who has run a training center in
Clermont for eight years.
She said Kerri Strug's gold medal-cinching vault on an injured ankle during the 1996 Atlanta games was
a ringing moment for women's sports.
"It couldn't have been written any better," she said. "A lot of women compete with injuries. For her, it
just happened to be the right time. I think that moment there, you are never gonna feel that again."
But if the attention granted to women athletes so far in 2005 is any indication of what lies ahead, then
experts agree there certainly will be others of similar magnitude.
"That is why people are into sport," Lopiano said. "It is the ultimate test. It has nothing to do with
being the only woman.
"They're testing themselves in a more challenging class."
And it's called history.