We're all amateurs

There was a small brouhaha over at The Golfchick, regarding the play of LPGA players versus PGA players. Specifically, Golfchick was critiquing an article by John Huggan, in which he argues elite woman players don't have as good of short games as their male counterparts because women have been led to believe that success lies in a good long game (which I've argued, ad nauseum, is bass akwards) I think Huggan may have a point in regards to elite players, but in the real world, it's much different. Since I rarely play with anyone scratch or better (in fact, at a 12-handicap, I'm often the best player in my group, which, I don't need to remind you, isn't much of an accomplishment) I can only comment on players in the mid-handicap level. In this handicap range, good short games are a rarity, but when you do run into them, it's as often a woman as a man. Actually, since there are so fewer women playing on Los Angeles's muni courses, you'd probably have to give the edge, in terms of skill as a gender, to women, because for every one woman who can pitch, chip and putt, there are 10 men who can't. As far as I can tell, we amateurs are equally matched, gender notwithstanding, so if you take the few hundred pros out of the equation, the genders are a lot closer in golf than would be obvious.