WOMEN PLAYING TO WIN - POINT : BATTLE OF THE SEXES HAS BEEN WON, BY ALL.Byline: Joseph Honig THAT our distaff soccer champions now tour America claiming their just rewards - cheers, admiration and lucrative endorsements - strongly confirms my faith in the female athlete of the species. After all, didn't I cheer Billie Jean King's storied trouncing of porcine-minded Bobby Riggs Robert Larimore ("Bobby") Riggs (February 25, 1918 – October 25, 1995) was a 1930s–40s tennis player who was the World No. 1 or the co-World No. 1 player for three years, first as an amateur in 1941, then as a professional in 1946 and 1947. , applaud Janet Guthrie's Indianapolis forays and vigorously support female sports writers The following is a list of sports writers. Historical sportswriters
But, like most men of my acquaintance, I voiced these sympathies from the comfort of my own neighborhood tennis court - where women were expected to be good, but not that good - and from the safety of my community gym, where no man had ever been beaten in one-on-one basketball by an opponent of the female persuasion. Truly, I look back on myself as a knee-jerk feminist whenever the conversation turned to sports. Today, I know at least a half-dozen women who take their weekend athletics as seriously as I do mine. While their dreams of a United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. Open center court have been deferred by marriages, careers and lack of world-class ability, they nevertheless are pondering a notion that would have been almost unthinkable a generation or so ago in refined male-female competition. They are playing to win. No longer are women satisfied to give us a ``respectable showing'' for a set or two of tennis and then, laughingly, double-fault, handing us both the match and our machismo machismo Exaggerated pride in masculinity, perceived as power, often coupled with a minimal sense of responsibility and disregard of consequences. In machismo there is supreme valuation of characteristics culturally associated with the masculine and a denigration of . Indeed, the equalization In communications, techniques used to reduce distortion and compensate for signal loss (attenuation) over long distances. of university athletic expenditures is scoring decisively on the jogging paths, tennis courts and basketball floors of American sporting life. Women are winning with regularity and I, for one, was unprepared for their victories. There was a time, I am told by a sensitive female friend, that young women were more or less briefed by their mothers to let their escorts shine. Listen to his stories, they were admonished, draw him out and never betray clearly superior athletic skill. If I am honest with myself, I must admit I knew it all the time. Never dwelled upon it, mind you, but knew it. Twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. ago, I faced women tennis opponents who flourished swift and fluid practice swings, only to yield match points the way graceful hostesses pass the hors d'oeuvres. And affirmative action affirmative action, in the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women. hindsight compels my recall of a winter run around San Francisco's Golden Gate Park This article is about the park in San Francisco. For the US National Recreation Area just north of there, see Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park. At 1017 acres (4.1 km², 1. with a female companion who allowed me a braggart's winning spirit and then patiently waited a half-hour for my heart and lungs to recover. Last fall my former running partner, now 45 years old, finished the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Marathon with energy to spare, forever relinquishing her pose as a ringer. So, while I have been a fervent Equal Rights Amendment backer for years, it is only now that I consider myself one of the hemisphere's true male feminists. I have mastered the art of losing to women. Squaring off against women on the handball handball Any of a variety games in which a small rubber ball is struck against a wall with the hand or fist. It can be played in a three- or four-walled court or against a single wall by two or four players (in singles or doubles games, respectively). or tennis court, I no longer expect victory. In the spirit of liberated play, I have stopped resorting to excuses when competing against a woman of superior ability. A back reported sprained while moving furniture or an ankle allegedly twisted during tango lessons, are lame apologies at best. On the field of honor they are but grown-up grown-up adj. 1. Of, characteristic of, or intended for adults: grown-up movies; a grown-up discussion. 2. versions of ``I left my homework at home.'' My need to offer false encouragement of female adversaries has subsided. Talented athletes, who also happen to be women, do not need to be told, ``Now, you're getting it,'' when they have executed obviously superior strokes. Additionally, what I now recognize as my chauvinistic attempts at instruction, are sadly out of date. A former mainstay of the University of California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States). Los Angeles women's tennis squad hardly required my weak suggestions on overheads during a recent match. An intermediate hacker at the top of my form, I was beaten soundly. There is, of course, an easy way to avoid these humiliations of the sporting psyche - as a formerly perceived such defeats: Do not compete against women of prowess. It is as simple as that. After all, aren't there enough murky parallels to be drawn from the contests themselves, let alone the tortures some might project from battles lost with female gamespersons? A male friend, employed by a ``men's'' magazine of wide circulation, has gone so far as to suggest I may enjoy losing to women - that I take pleasure in watching them leap the net in what Roone Arledge immortalized as ``the thrill of victory.'' I have told him he's full of steroids. |
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