Danica and Annika

Race driver Danica Patrick and golf professional Annika Sorenstam inspire all

No excuse for me not keeping up on the world of auto racing; my interests along those lines are more hands-on, and at a much lower level of proficiency:  I take part occasionally in time-distance rallies and in performance driving weekends with my Audi A4.  As regular readers of from Reason to Freedom may know, I also indulge myself with long solo journeys cross-country mainly for the freedom of driving.

For some reason though this Memorial Day I tuned in to see how celebrated open-wheel Indy Racing League (IRL) driving professional, Danica Patrick, would fare among some of the best drivers in the world—the sole woman in a field of 33 drivers.  Her inclusion was through the Bobby Rahal team and a common qualification process; ref. Danica career highlights.

Naturally, the media buzz started months before the 89^th Indy 500, and like Tiger Woods when he turned pro, Danica was prepared.  She turned the attention on her toward success in driving.  In the case of both of these rare athletes—yes, let's call them athletes, even without running-and-jumping exploits—they are worthy of the hype.

Danica placed fourth in the 2005 Indianapolis 500!  The exclamation point is understated.  Indeed, while we're making comparisons to Tiger Woods, Danica's placing fourth and actually leading the race for 19 laps ranks up there (in my humble opinion) with Tiger's winning the Masters in 1997.  Well, okay, if she had won you could make that comparison.  More realistically, compare her feat to Tiger being the only amateur to make the cut at the 1995 Masters.

At 23, she was the second youngest driver in the field.  She is the first woman to ever lead in the Indianapolis 500.  Some have dwelt on her rookie mistakes and luck, and those are worth considering in the grand scheme of the cosmos.  But rookie mistakes and luck have affected many other drivers, too.  Her achievement should not be diminished.  Danica was only 4.5515 seconds behind the winner at the end of the most legendary race in the country!

Can we draw any generalizations from this marvelous accomplishment?  Especially considering that at 5'1" and 110 pounds (probably more like 100 pounds after the race), the intensely attractive young woman beat most of the guys.  Well, yes, I think so.  But first let's consider a professional golfer from the distaff side: Annika Sorenstam.

On the babe scale, where, say, Anna Kournikova is a 10 and Danica Patrick a 9, impartial observers probably rate Annika a 7.5.  In her early years—she joined the LPGA in 1994—she had that wholesome Swedish farm girl look and may have registered an 8, tops.

Now let's look at the stats:

Annika has 56 LPGA tournament victories.  She's won nine women's majors (for the nongolfing reader, a major is usually one of three or four prestigious tournaments, like a US Open), and has been ranked number one for eight seasons since she turned professional.  This year, 2005, she already has five wins in seven starts.

In 2003, using a sponsor's exemption, she entered a men's event, the PGA Bank of America Colonial, in Fort Worth, Texas, and missed the cut by a scant four strokes.  Most people say her entry was good for golf, men's and women's both.  I agree.

Annika is long off the tee, averaging somewhere around 285 yards (approximately equal to the middle-of-the-pack PGA man) and has a terrific short game.  If she entered every men's event over a ten-year period, some analysts feel she would win a handful of them.  I also believe very few other women on the LPGA Tour—Michelle Wie, the 15-year-old phenom, can probably do it—would be able to win, or even make the cut more than occasionally.

Danica and Annika share a distinction which is actually a difference: how their sports accommodate women.  Unlike road racing, enough girls enter golf to have many leagues and tournaments set up for them.  Racing isn't like that.  (On the Web I couldn't find any US women's auto racing events; perhaps world rally racing has some women's events.)  Danica, unlike Annika, was competing in a non-gender-specific sport from the beginning.

From Danica's interviews, you see immediately she is solely motivated by love of racing and winning.  Racing is in her blood.  It's who she is.  It's what makes her creative.  She must be exceptional at her sport just to be able to do her sport.  If there were a series of women's racing events, she'd certainly dominate there, just as Annika dominates the LPGA.

The question is can Danica win big in the non-gender-specific world of Indy and CART racing.  I believe she can—don't forget one of the top-fuel drag racing champions of all time, Shirley Muldowney, who raced into her 50s—and this week's Indy shows Danica certainly has the skills and the passion to do so.

Like many men, I root for her in the absence of any preexisting interest in the sport, because I relish the sight of a beautiful woman achieving her dream in such a physically and mentally exciting venue.

Yes, I relish that sight a bit more than a not-so-beautiful woman achieving her dream.  But the "beauty" thing works both ways: Again in the golf world, I recall spectating at the 2004 TPC at Sawgrass (near Jacksonville, Florida).  Australian golfer Adam Scott, then also 23, won.  I was on the sideline of the par 3 13^th as he walked by.  A bunch of teenage girls hollered and carried on like he was a rock star.  I doubt they knew he was in contention.

With the enthusiasm stemming from Danica's poetry in motion, interest in Indy is back up and the open-wheel racing community may come together again.  Tony George, whom many regard as a world-class barnacle of Biblical proportions on the ass of auto-racing progress, holds the key.  He controls the IRL-governed 500.

George broke the IRL away from CART 10 years ago.  This split the open-wheel racing community, and both sides have suffered waning interest ever since.  NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) has kicked their collective booty.  If George sees benefit in reunifying the sport, then a large part of his "revelation" will be due to a focused little girl from Wisconsin who decided to grace his playpen on a Memorial Day Sunday.

If American open-wheel racing gets healthy, it may present a weekend-TV dilemma, at least for yours truly: racing and hot chicks or golf and watching the paint dry?