HAS there ever been so much self-pontificating guff as that which has revolved around leading women's golfer Annika Sorenstam?

Her participation in a major men's tour event - the Bank of America Colonial on the US Tour - drew a volley of vitriol before she even let loose her first tee-shot. Then, when she failed to make the cut, there was the predictable smatter of smirking and sniggering right out of the 'I told you so school' to drown the praise that her stance so richly merited.

That crassness and charmlessness fails to recognise that Sorenstam's performance in the Tour event was exceptional even if she did not get past the half-way stage.

Her two rounds of 71 and 74 did leave her five shots off the qualifying mark. But in those 36 holes of play she registered nothing worse than a bogey, which was remarkable given the tornado of media attention which whirled around her every shot on the Texas-based course.

Even, as she herself later speculated, Miss Sorenstam never ever graces a men's event again, what she has done should neither be 'dissed', dismissed or be allowed to disappear.

Sport is nothing if it is not about taking on unsurpassable odds, striving against adversity, championing the cause of the underdog. She took them all on.

Indeed, rather than make disparaging remarks about the Swedish woman's alleged audacity, if anything, golf should be embracing Sorenstam for her courage, commitment and sheer 'balls' in trying to break down a barrier in a sport where so often women are treated like second-class citizens.

In some clubhouses, not just in this country but around the globe, golf has barely inched out of the era of plus fours, mashie niblicks and worst of all, Victorian values. You get the feeling that in certain clubs if they could bring back juvenile chimney sweeps and outbreaks of rickets to keep down the hoi-polloi then God, male of course, really would be in his heaven and all would be well in the world of unchanging chauvinism.

Women are frequently dealt the roughest of justice out on the fairways. That inequity extends to the clubhouse, or at least those parts of the premises into which women are not admitted without a letter from the Holy Ghost, or more pertinent still, a man giving the 'little lady' his express permission to be there.

The issue of Sorenstam's participation in the men's tour also raised the wider issue of discrimination.

And what was unbelievable to this observer was how someone as esteemed a player as Vijay Singh could be so dismissive of Sorenstam's intention to compete alongside men.

It's not so long ago that anyone far from being wholly white-skinned would have been allowed to have walked on some American courses, let alone play on them.

Why, there was even cloaked, yet crystal-clear remarks from fellow Americans about Tiger Woods' planned eve of US Masters championship feast, the choice of menu for which is the privilege of the previous year's winner. Yet the Fijian Singh seemed to have a selective memory as to that unpalatable truth.

Are we living in the 21st century? Sometimes it is doubtful.

Yet any measure which can dismantle the hazards of prejudice and discrimination which have handicapped the image of golf for so many years has to be supported.

Miss Sorenstam, take a bow. You have done your game a great service.

Do you agree? Then launch a counter-attack at tony.kelly@ycp.co.uk

Updated: 11:41 Tuesday, May 27, 2003