Kelly Kulick is a 33-year-old professional bowler who won the Professional Bowler's Association Women's World Championship. A new PBA rule allowed her to qualify for the men's tournaments. She entered arguably the most prestigious event - the Tournament of Champions - and beat 62 of the best male bowlers, defeating the world's #1 ranked bowler in the final match 265-195.
When Billy Jean King beat a mediocre Bobby Riggs, the world press covered the event. Auto racing's Danica Patrick and golf's Michelle Wie are household names. In a column at ESPN The Magazine, sportswriter Rick Reilly asks why Kelly Kulick's accomplishment is not receiving more publicity.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4936940. Photo: Mark Peterson for ESPN Magazine.
When Billy Jean King beat a mediocre Bobby Riggs, the world press covered the event. Auto racing's Danica Patrick and golf's Michelle Wie are household names. In a column at ESPN The Magazine, sportswriter Rick Reilly asks why Kelly Kulick's accomplishment is not receiving more publicity.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4936940. Photo: Mark Peterson for ESPN Magazine.
But, in my humble opinion, for remarkable accomplishments by female athletes you need look no further than Olympic athlete Clara Hughes. While she has never to my knowledge competed directly against men, she has the distinction of winning multiple Olympic medals at both the summer and winter games.
And, by the way, she's not just the only woman to have done this.
She's also the only human to have done it. Ever.
If you don't feel that 90 games in six days is a test of physical endurance and skill, please feel free to try it yourself. And never mind keeping the score that high; my arm would fall off after the first day.
It's been that way for decades and probably won't change until The Bowling Channel is launched.
Really? I'd have thought soccer was - played in near enough every country in the world by billions.
BTW, it is Billie Jean, not Billy Jean.
Well.... Maybe some day.....
I wouldn't call you insane for arguind that golf wasn't a sport. However, in golf there are countless ways to approach a hole, based on your abilities with different sets of clubs. You may try to for the green, or lay up. Do you try to carry the bunker or play it safe? How fast are the greens today? Where's the hole placement? There's a lot more strategy that you need to employ for every hole, every course, and depending on the abilities of the individual playing.
In bowling you're trying to do the exact thing everytime, right? Sure, lane conditions are different but ultimately, you want a strike everytime. IS there any other strategy to it?
Your comparison falls a little flat because you've simplified bowling, but not simplified golf. I can just as easily say, "You're just trying to get the ball in the hole every time, right?" With bowling, there are different ways to get a strike, and different strategies depending on how you choose to curve the ball; fairly analogous to how you choose to approach the hole in golf.
Lane conditions change over the course of the game, as well as simply bowling on different oil patterns as a whole, which require a good bowler to be able to bowl in different ways, even though they're always trying to achieve that same effect.
Yes but the best desired outcome is far easier in bowling. I can't count the number of strikes I've gotten in bowling, but I can count the number of hole-in-ones I've gotten, zero. The only fair analogy would be if golf was designed around the hole-in-one, which it isn't. Plus you have to include weather. Golf strategy is uncountably more complicated than bowling strategy.
Any goof can roll a ball and get a "perfect" bowling outcome, it takes something more to get a hole-in-one or even under par.
Bowling is not a sport, it's an impressive skill but not a sport.