That's exactly how many photos there were of the Kingsmill LPGA tournament on Yahoo Sports this morning. The other 190 photos were of the men's Players Championship. Three out of the ten they did include featured Natalie Gulbis, who tied for seventh but who happens to be blond and American (although with her makeup job she could also claim citizenship in raccoon nation). Five were of blond American Cristie Kerr, but in her defense she did win the event. One was of Lorena Ochoa, who finished tenth but is the only female golfer most American fans recognize, and one was of American fifth-place golfer Wendy Ward. You would never know that the tournament came down to a close finish between Kerr, South Koreans In-Kyung Kim and Song-Hee Kim, and Briton Lindsey Wright.

Photo: In the apparent absence of her caddy (off waiting for the Players results?), Kerr anoints herself with the sponsoring beer following her win. Credit: Hunter Martin/Getty.

View Original Post at ftlouie.typepad.com/womensports

• Filed Under:  
• Golf, Sports, SportsPLUS, Media/Marketing

• Tags:
• golf
• Broadcasters and Journalists

There are 5 comments on this post. Join the discussion!

Sherry	Until women step up and throw their 'financial' weight around to make sponsors take notice of our purchasing power, we will always be in the back seat when it comes to sports coverage (among other things). See the article (Sportcasters Ignore Women's Golf) at http://tinyurl.com/cwf3fe.
	Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 9:44am EDT

FatLouie	Of course! It's our fault! Why didn't I think of that? Victim-blaming 101, the patriarchy's favorite class.
	Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 10:52am EDT

FatLouie

ps- Here's an actual substantive response. News outlets, like the one I was writing about, are supposed to report *the news.* This is journalism, which is still technically separate from advertising. Of course you want to sell ad space, but because of journalistic integrity you shouldn't be able to say 'oh, I think that thing that happened in the South Bronx didn't happen so I can write about the Hamptons instead.' Except that's exactly what sports journalists do. So people begin to think that the South Bronx doesn't exist, or isn't important, and that has NOTHING to do with the inherent value of the people there. Men are valuable in this society. Women who show strength and independence, not so much.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 11:05am EDT

sherry	It seems like there a lot of women who want to raise issues about the inequities in the marketplace but don't or aren't willing to take any action to change them. We have tremendous power financially. Are we really using it to make sponsors/advertisers take notice? The formula for this is business 101 [fans spending = advertisers = better coverage (to appease the advertisers' dollars)
	Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 9:39am EDT

FatLouie

Since you didn't address the actual issues I raised, I'm going to try one more time: the relationship of women's sports to the power structure is connected to the position of women in the society as a whole. Money is to a certain extent power in America, but only to the extent that there aren't other, deeply entrenched attitudes that undermine that power. Women are already fans in huge numbers of sports like football, and they spend money on tickets and merchandise, but marketers continue to completely ignore them. Your ability as a minority to attract advertising dollars is not necessarily going to help your social status. Most importantly, our invisibility HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR WORTHINESS TO BE SEEN. That is, again, victim-blaming, and it's what you're doing every time you insist that we have to do thus and such to get men to pay attention to us. We need to support causes financially because we want to, and because it's internally empowering, not to take on the responsibility of 'fixing' the screwed up views of the male sports world.

Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 11:46am EDT