Should Ochoa Tee It Up With The Men?

Steve Elling reports that Lorena Ochoa has twice turned down sponsor's invites to the PGA Tour's Mayakoba Golf Classic, staged in her native Mexico. And while it's not the Colonial in terms of exposure, it's hard to fathom a negative in this should she accept what sounds like an open invitation to play anytime.

Moving up a league seems downright logical, since tedium could set in at any moment -- if not for her, then her growing fan base. She's has won her five LPGA starts this year by an average of 7.6 strokes, including a pair by 11. Yeah, a touchdown, field goal and two-point conversion amount to a pretty big deficit in golf.

When Annika Sorenstam played against the boys at Colonial in 2003, it created a three-tiered public-relations boon for her career, the event and the LPGA. Ochoa last year supplanted Sorenstam as No. 1 in the women's rankings, and though the notion of females competing against men has since been relegated to the stuff of desperate publicity stunts (see: Michelle Wie), Ochoa's presence in a field can be justified on a competitive level.