Annika Sorenstam has a sponsor's exemption to play in the Colonial in May. For the uninitiated, that's a men's golf tournament. Not to put too piggish a point on it, but it should be a one-shot deal. Women don't belong on the PGA Tour any more than Phil Mickelson belongs in the red tee-box. Though if Lefty did play from the reds, he might actually win a major.

Beyond curiosity, what's the need? I'll be as interested as the next guy/woman to see how Sorenstam does. I also think Michael Jordan could play another five years in the WNBA and Hugh Grant should be nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

There are reasons men and women don't play professional golf together, the biggest being men are better golfers. Sorenstam is the best female golfer in the world. She might be the best ever. The debate isn't if she'll win the Colonial. It's if she'll make the cut.

The men's courses are longer, their greens faster, their rough deeper. Sorenstam averages 265 yards off the tee. That's fourth-best in the women's game. It'd be good for 148th on the PGA Tour. Colonial is 7,080 yards, short by PGA Tour standards. It's still 522 yards longer than any LPGA course.

The Stimpmeter, a gizmo that measures green speed, is usually set at 12 or 13 for the men. The women's average is 10. The men are two or three Stimps faster, if you're counting. Their primary rough averages an inch deeper. Other than that, everything's the same.

Maybe Sorenstam will play Colonial like Ben Hogan. Maybe on Colonial's 470-yard, par-4 5th hole, she'll drill her tee ball 280 yards down the middle, then land a 190-yard 5-wood in the center of the green, soft as a May morning.

Colonial has two par-3s longer than 185 yards. Men will lob high 7-irons into those greens. Sorenstam will have to do the same with a 7-wood. Good luck.

The old Fort Worth, Texas, course is filled with doglegs that make the men hit 2-iron or 3-wood from some tees. Sorenstam will hit her driver. That will help her. It's the next shot that will test her. From 180 yards, would you rather hit a 7-iron or a 5-wood? Sorenstam has a surgeon's touch around the greens. She'll need it.

"The next thing you know, some guy is going to want to play on the women's tour," said Burch Riber. For two decades, Riber ran tournaments here, first the PGA's Kings Island Open, then the LPGA Championship and finally the Kroger Senior Classic.

Riber recalled one year at the LPGA Championship a local male pro threatening to sue the tournament for the right to play. The pro never filed suit because he couldn't find a lawyer to take his case. "It was too outrageous," Riber said. "At the time."

I don't know why we feel a need to merge the sexes in golf, whether it's on the course in Fort Worth or in the clubhouse at Augusta. Men don't want to play women's games or join women's organizations. Equality in the real-world workplace seems a worthier pursuit. Tougher spousal abuse laws are more important than getting a woman into a green Masters coat.

"I am curious to see if I can compete," Annika Sorenstam said. So is everyone else. Once that's satisfied, let's be done with it. It's just golf.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com