LPGA versus PGA Tour: Can women be as diverse as men?

“Where are the LPGA fans obsessed with their tour’s Chris DiMarco equivalent?”

This quote, from a recent Chris Baldwin Blog, got me thinking lately. Heck, it even distracted me from my alma mater’s great win in the ACC football championship. Double heck, it even took me away from reading Dot Wong’s evocative prose.

Baldwin wonders where, oh where, are the fans…my question is, who is the equivalent? The only blood-and-guts grinder I can come up with on the LPGA Tour is Juli Inkster. Only problem is, she has way more major championships than DiMarco. Three US Ams and a couple Opens, at least.

Here, though, is the difference. The PGA Tour can have a fat, amorphous, chocolate-biscuit-gravy, chain smoking lunk on tour, and watch John Daly bring in the fans. Where is the food-slamming, booze-pounding, tobacco-sucking equivalent on the LPGA Tour? There isn’t one, nor can there ever be. DiMarco is a reactionary hillbilly, for the most part, from non-metropolitan Florida. He is a man’s man, down to the hunting and the fishing and the Go Gators cheer for his alma mater. Any votes for the female equivalent?

The diversity on the PGA Tour has long been held up to ridicule…bunch of spoiled white boys, everything handed to them as they grew up. Well, those spoiled white boys come in all shapes and sizes, with all levels of ethical and reasonable behavior. Would America tolerate such a variety of “types” on the LPGA Tour? I don’t think so. America doesn’t tolerate a slutty Paris Hilton, but it will embrace a drunken Danny Devito, a slutty ex-president (one guess), and it might even forgive an angry Michael Richards.

The funny bone here is, the LPGA Tour counts scads of Koreans, a few Swedes, a Paraguayan, a Mexican, Fins, Canadians, some Aussies, and a German. And, unlike Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, they even want the Irish!! The LPGA is more ethnically diverse than the PGA Tour. As far as behavior goes, however, it will never be. Demure, reserved ladies are still held up as America’s sweethearts, no matter what country gave them origin.