All these years we’ve been pretending to watch the game. But now we know: The PGA Tour has not really been about golf. It has been about Tiger.

By contrast, the LPGA is – even with the extra ratings bump of Michelle Wie – all about the play. This year featured 20 different tournament winners and a Rolex Player of the Year race that went down to the wire (Lorena Ochoa took it). And don’t forget the infectious fun at the Solheim Cup (note: this sort of format could be the future of the sport…!)

The LPGA, much belittled earlier this year for being in disarray, has scraped together 24 official money events in 10 countries for 2010 (note the global marketing approach) and topped it off with the announcement last month that Wegman’s (yes, a regional supermarket chain — the personal, community connection piece) would sponsor the LPGA Tour Championship at Locust Hill in Rochester, NY, June 21-27.

Like the thinking that dominated Wall Street before The Fall, the PGA’s view of itself may have been, well, exaggerated. Golf is not the NFL. But it is a terrific sport that a lot of people play for recreation (as opposed to football). But without Tiger (and do we want him now?), the PGA simply does not have the status and national sponsor appeal that it once did.

But that’s really okay – and may even be an opportunity. This may be just the moment for the PGA and LPGA to announce several coed, team-play events. A Ryder Cup, mixed?

Who says men and women can’t play golf together – and make it more compelling (and better sponsored) than a Tigerless PGA?

Um, earth to FairGameNews.com readers! Did no one read Laura’s post on Monday? (Actually our tracker shows they did). Then, why no comments to tell her she was talking crazy? C’mom — you’ve got to keep us on our toes!

I read it and nearly came through my computer screen. This is one of the issues on which Laura and I (respectfully, of course) disagree.

Personally, I couldn’t believe that this White House basketball thing made front page news. I saw it, read half of it, and became so disgusted by how PC we’ve all become that I didn’t even make it to the end.

I mean – really? At what point did it become the President of the United States’ (or, as Laura and other have so eloquently put it, the POTUS’) job to ensure gender equality on a pick-up basketball court?

Healthcare, social security, our ongoing wars in the Middle East… these are all things that demand his time and attention. Rallying the women of the White House to the b-ball court? Not his job.

I have a difficult time believing that any female White House staffer who showed up dressed to play ball would be turned away by the President.  He’s a husband who continues to date, adore, and showcase his ‘buff’ wife and a father to two burgeoning female athletes. Oh, and by the way, he just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in bridging divided groups. There is simply no reason to suspect he’s being prohibitive when it comes to women in any kind sports – informal or otherwise.

So if we don’t get to blame the President for the lack of women in b-ball, who can we blame? Hate to say it ladies, but it’s no one but ourselves. As long as we women wait for a special invitation, we’ll be missing the action. If the reality is that deals and decisions get made out there, then we better start working on our finger rolls and jump shots.

Let Danica Patrick, Michelle Wie, and Brittany Ryan serve as a lesson to us all: sports are no longer exclusive – unless we, as women, continue to play the part of the excluded.

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, a former three-time college All-American selection, and and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for team sports, but I love the Solheim Cup. Where else do can you catch face paint, hard-slapping high fives, and I-got-your-back hugs – in golf?

In a sport that – this year, particularly on the women’s side – has been in disarray, the Solheim Cup competition in Sugar Groves, Illinois this past weekend reminded us why golf – no, women’s golf — is such a riveting game. For starters, it was fun. There was the get-the-crowd pumped animation of Christina Kim, and plenty of mano a mano competition from Paula Creamer and Angela Stanford to 49-year-old Juli Inkster (who earned a half a point for the US team).

And then there was Michelle.

Remember the girl everyone loved to hate because she insisted on playing with the boys? Recall that she only got a spot on the team thanks to a wild card pick by team captain Beth Daniel (neither Wie nor Inkster had earned enough points through LPGA play to make it otherwise).

Now Daniel looks like a genius. Wie went 3-0-1, helping the Americans win 16-12. The lesson here is that Michelle has always been good. She has not always played well. She has sometimes made choices that bothered other women because they viewed her eagerness for male competition – her father B.J. Wie famously said in 2003 that, “Tiger is her benchmark. Not women – Tiger” – as a dis.

But fact is, teenager girls (or – err – their dads) say a lot of stuff. As sportswomen, as competitors, we should give one another enough room to talk big, to even have a little swagger. Hey, it could be just what the LPGA needs.

It is the quiet story behind the high-profile victories of women’s athletics:  After thirty years of Title IX, after the superstardom of Mia Hamm, Michelle Wie, and Venus Williams, even after the advocacy of groups like the Women’s Sports Foundation, girls – especially in urban communities – are playing sports in lower numbers than boys.

There are many reasons for this and we heard about some in the Sunday New York Times and, more poignantly, in a short video on the NYT website.

As an athlete and a recent Yale School of Public Health graduate who just completed a research project in which I focused on this very issue, I can tell you it’s frustrating and disappointing. Why do so many sit on the sidelines – or in public health terms, why do so many girls express feelings of low self-efficacy towards sports?  The problem is particularly prevalent in urban and African American communities where residents have below average health, are low-income, and come from less educated households.

What do girls in just about every research study say? “I am self-conscious about my looks when I exercise” or “I am not motivated to be active.” Such feelings reflect a youth sports culture in which girls join later, play less, and quit sooner than their male counterparts.

So what has been done about it?

For years there has been a focus on trying to get girls to change the way they perceive their place in relation to sports. (In my world of lacrosse, sticks, gloves and goggles aimed at girls are ubiquitously pink). Some populations of girls have responded (When Title IX was enacted in 1972, 1 in 27 girls in high school played sports, now it’s one in three!). But other groups remain obstinately unchanged. This is, to some extent, unsurprising in a market saturated with images and messages aimed at bolstering female sexuality. (See FGN post)

Rather than try — and fail — to change girls’ attitudes, some of the newest interventions side-step the low self-efficacy issue all together. Instead, new strategies promote non-sports physical activity to prevent these children from becoming disinterested in or unable to participate in exercise all together.

The first of its kind, the Stanford Dance for Health intervention, for example, substituted dance classes for traditional physical activity classes three times a week in a mostly low-income middle school population.   In a randomized control trial, girls who had been assigned to the dance intervention significantly improved their fitness and reduced their BMI gain compared to girls in the control group.

Hip Hop to Health Jr. is a 5-year randomized intervention conducted in 24 Head Start programs where each site is randomized to either a 14-week dietary/physical activity intervention or a general health intervention. These approaches capture the attention (and it seems, enthusiasm) of an audience that will seem (at the moment, at least) unlikely to be captured by classic youth sports such as gym class dodgeball or Saturday morning soccer.

The big question remains, though: Do these programs miss the point that girls need to participate in sports? How you answer may depend on what you think sports do for a child (there is much more, many might suggest, than fitness to be gained).

On the other hand, might dance-based interventions give these girls safe time and space that might otherwise be lacking?  And if young girl gets that body confidence first in dance, whose to say it can’t be guided onto the field, court – or into the pool?

Lauren Taylor, assistant coach of Women’s Lacrosse at Yale, graduated from the Yale School of Public Health earlier this month, and is now working for the Yale Global Health Initiative.