Sophia Popov won the Women’s Open this year. Natalie Gulbis has failed to make a single cut in more than two years. Popov does not possess an Instagram account, but Gulbis does, and her 120,000-plus followers are regularly treated to images of the sometime swimwear model on the beach.
Guess who has been invited to play in the season-ending CME Group World Tour Championship this week? And guess who has not?
Popov, 28, is rightfully angry that she has been overlooked for one of the two sponsor’s spots in the field in Naples, Florida, that is supposed to feature the top players of the LPGA Tour season. See Naples and sigh.
“It’s a fairness thing as far as playing ability,” Popov told Golfweek. “It’s not like I haven’t earned it. I have earned it points-wise, technically.”
Except, her glory at Troon and all the points she earned on the Ayrshire coast in August did not count because of red tape.
Popov was a member of the LPGA Tour’s feeder league, but not of the Tour itself. So Mike Whan, the Tour’s commissioner, stood firm, earning himself “Jobsworth of the Year” honours by denying the new superstar of the female game entry into the year’s second major, the Ana Inspiration, two weeks after the Women’s Open.
Popov hoped that would be it as far as the disregard went, vowing to prove that she would not need the five-year exemption on a Tour card that the major champion normally receives. Yet now comes this kick in the teeth.
And it is not just a boot in the flashy molars for one individual, but for everyone who wants the professional female game to be treated with the respect it deserves as a collection of ultra-talented competitors in their own right.
Terry Duffy, chief executive of CME Group, a global markets company that prides itself on achieving the perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, attempted to justify picking Gulbis because “I have known her since 2005”.
