The rise of women's sports, cracking the Master's code, and put down your cell
I needed some time to process everything that's happened over the past few weeks, and it's time to explain my brain.
When I started Open Court, now nearly three (?!) years ago at the artist formerly known as Facebook, I made myself a promise: I was not going to write anything if I was not feeling it down to my toes. Yes, I know the engagement monster requires you to post constantly, across like 4 platforms, constantly getting the audience hyped and commenting. Yes, yes, the best practices.
I think a lot of of engagement we see is not authentic, or frankly, just exists to feed the 24/7 infinite maw of the interwebs. Is Open Court boasting 2 million followers and am I writing from my villa outside of Malaga…nah. The villa remains on the to-do list. (And seriously, Malaga and that whole area in Spain is my jam. Don’t threaten me with a good time eating gambas al ajillo, with a glass of torrontés, while sitting on a balcony overlooking the Alboran Sea. I may, or not, have done too much thinking about this…but IYKYK.)
So much has gone down the last two weeks in the land of sports, that we all need to sit back and process:
The Caitlin Clark phenomenon, which has led to the invariable amazing writing and beyond head-scratching hot takes on why she is bad in all ways. (not giving those fools any run). Her turn on Saturday Night Live last weekend was lovely, as a slap down of the largely unfunny Weekend Update faux anchor Michael Che was long overdue. He has been running his mouth about women’s basketball, Simone Biles, and Serena Williams long enough. She posted him up and got the and-1. Welcome to the league, No. 1 draft pick, own the narrative. Clark has handled herself with class and strength all season, which is amazing for anybody living in the middle of a media maelstrom. She did not not ask for the hype machine, but she has learned how to navigate it, make some money, and build her adult life. That’s really impressive. I hope she can continue to live in a graceful way, despite the media on her.
South Carolina women’s basketball: Head Coach Dawn Staley is the warrior queen-basketball coach-philosopher we all need in our life. Her teams are also beautiful, from the way they play to how they support each other. Which all leads to championships.
The women’s sports renaissance: To those getting on the bus, I say this. The revolution will indeed not be televised, rather, will happen through all of us in real time. We are well beyond the charitable intention stage, saying stuff like, “It’s nice that the ladies are playing basketball too!” We are getting into the heart of the jam, knowing empirically that in 2024, women’s sports make money, bring eyeballs, sponsor cash in real ways. We saw the bump with soccer, through the 1996 Olympics and the 1999 World Cup, saw the interest in women’s hoops grow through the NCAA into the WNBA, and the next up for the glow up will be women’s hockey and volleyball. Clark, Angel Reese, JuJu Watkins, et al, have arrived in bigger ways because the stage was built, decorated, lights turned on, and minds opened by the women who walked before them. Women like Staley, one of the baddest guards of all time in hoops - women or men - built this house. The effect of Title IX is real, and my fellow Gen X sisters love seeing the younger ones get the flowers. The assholes who live to tell anybody on the socials that they don’t care about women’s sports or they suck, or my favorite, could back Angel down and dunk on her (in their 45-year-old, never played higher than eighth grade CYO ball state)…you cute. The revolution was never about you, it was about everybody else who gets it.
UConn dominates men’s college hoops, should we start openly questioning if UConn is bad for the sport? Oh yes, I am saying that in massive sarcastic font, as that was the idiocy some had when the UConn women were dominating. That lovely canard of being too good is actually bad for the sport. Whatever, not their problem. How about everybody else raising their game?
The Masters, in its hushed announcer tones and cult syntax was back. I love about the tournament is the club banning cell phones on the course. Yeah, have you never noticed there are no wacky selfies, bad tiktoks, or people facetiming the world from Amen Corner? Yep, no cell phones. I loved this piece on how nice it is to attend an event without phones. The need to document experiences, aka pics/video or it didn’t happen, has profoundly altered - even ruined - shared experiences like concerts and sporting events. Patrons (wink, wink, nod, nod) would spend more time staring at the screen than the live experience. Props to the Masters for holding the line on no cells.
THIS, from Tom Coyne: “…It’s difficult to imagine another venue where so many people so badly want to be where they are right now. Plant me at the Super Bowl or beneath a palapa or beside the Eiffel Tower, and I’d rather be squeezed into a folding green chair watching caddies in white jumpsuits lean their way up the hill on 8. The power of such collective contentedness is hard to overstate. It’s the spring from which the Masters magic pours. It isn’t pimento cheese or well-dressed gnomes or fringe that’s trimmed with a nail clipper. Rather, it’s the rare joy of being on the same page en masse. It’s the reassurance of looking in the same direction, particularly when you live in a world of sideways glances.
We all used to watch the slam dunk contest together, too. WrestleMania was once unmissable, and even baseball’s all-star game was must-see summer stuff. But success too often ignites the hype machine and soon traditions turn to trends, packaged and looped until they’re banal leftovers only suitable for nostalgic documentaries. When we overhype the thing to where hype becomes the thing, we’re left a little emptier and a lot more numb. We’re stuck spinning through clips and images, amused but not elated, feeling happiness but not joy, knowing distraction but not immersion, existing there but never here…
I heartily co-sign.
Time to think: This opener for the Sunday Masters round stuck in my subconscious, and I didn’t know why. Something was off about it, something subtle. It talks about golf, aka “golf’s greatest moment”, when it refers to the Masters. Fine. Then I got to the chase: it’s not the greatest moment in golf. It’s the greatest moment in MEN’S GOLF, because no woman has ever been allowed to compete (as in a women’s Masters LPGA major tournament). So when we code things, we need to think about what is really being said. For too long, we have accepted the default as the men’s side, aka the U.S. Open, and the U.S. Women’s Open. Or the World Cup and the Women’s World Cup. Notice the difference? The guys are the main deal, and oh lookie, the ladies get their own too, but we have to make sure you know the women’s is not the same. Subconscious same but not equal. There is only one golf. I guarantee, at this summer’s, Women’s British Open, when they do a montage it will be said that it is women’s history. So Jim Nantz and CBS fell into that rabbit hole, which is not surprising, because golf is one of the deepest bastions of “tradition” and Augusta National is power epicenter of defying of the changing world. Is this minor in face of all the other stuff going on, sure. But it’s a small signal of other things.
So that’s what I have been thinking about. Life always goes on. And the beauty of sports remains our ability to see the world through its lens.
And if Dawn or Caitlin ever challenge you to a game of HORSE…run. They got you.
Totally non-sport related, but I fell in love with Fuengirola, a bit southish of Malaga, when I camped there during my requisite hippie spring break trip in ‘72. It’s my place when the meditation masters tell me to picture a place in my head.
And it makes me nuts when we refer to teams as “the lady warhammers” or to events like the “ Women’s World Cup.” I may have created some ill feelings when I announced that since the women do better in their World Cup, they should get top biiling with no adjective, and the one in which the guys play should be known as “the Men’s World Cup.”
Great to read your thoughts on where we are after all the hype has settled down. Good to have it, but now we're back in the trenches as the fights for equity continue. Thanks for carrying us along, Melissa