The good news for fans of women's sports is that players and teams are growing in popularity. And it's not just women and little girls who are following female athletes. An AP poll last spring showed that about half of the fans of women sports are men. (It also showed that about 30 percent of US adults follow women's sports to some extent. While this is about half the number who pay attention to men's sports, it still demonstratess remarkable growth in interest.)
I grew up an avid follower of baseball, and a regular follower of hockey, football, and basketball. Boston teams. All male.
There were some women athletes: Tenley Albright and Peggy Fleming skated. Althea Gibson and Billie Jean King played tennis. Pat Bradley was a Massachusetts "girl" about my age who became an LPGA star.
There were no women's professional teams that I was aware of.
Title IX didn't exist, and there were far fewer opportunities for girls to participate in sports. (I was on the Latin team, however.)
All this may explain why I only sporadically pay any attention to women's team sports. And pay about the same degree of attention to women's individual sports. I don't avidly follow most men's individual sports, either.
Anyway, the LPGA has become a pretty big deal over the last decade or so, and now a number of their star players - or their names, anyway - have been caught up in catfishing incidents in which imposters impersonating them on social media con fans out of big bucks.
Fans have followed legit, verified accounts of female golfers, and some that looked legit enough, and have been approached by the "seemingly" legit accounts with preposterous messages.
Take Rodney, a 62 year old, self-acclaimed major LPGA fan from Indiana. Rodney isn't real. The Athletic (NY Times sports wing) invented him and gave him an Insta account to test whether there indeed is an "ever-increasing social media scam pervading the LPGA."
...received a message from what at first glance appeared to be the world’s No. 2-ranked female golfer, Nelly Korda.
“Hi, handsomeface, i know this is like a dream to you. Thank you for being a fan,” read a direct message from @nellykordaofficialfanspage2. (Source: NY Times)
Needless to say, the real Nelly Korda wasn't out there calling Rodney "handsomeface." Nor did she send him that video he received in which she called Rodney by name. (This was via an altered AI video.) Fortunately there's no real Rodney to get suckered into believing that an attractive, rich, fit, blonde golf star thought he was handsome.
Other marks were not so fortunate. What happened to them was all too real.
A Pennsylvania guy - like the fictional Rodney, in his 60s - headed to a tournament, thinking he was going to meet golfer Rose Zhang. He was expecting a VIP package from Zhang, and a hotel room for him that had been booked by her.
He said they had been communicating on social media for over a year, during which he had sent her around $70,000. Zhang’s agent confronted the man, breaking the news that he was not communicating with Zhang.
One fellow, again a 60-something, was duped out of $50K by someone pretending to be In Gee Chun, a golfer from Sout Korea. One Asian guy showed up at a tourney in the US "believing he was married to one of the players." (Can you get married over social media???) A 72-year-old man from South Carolina didn't think he was married, but did get tricked into believing that he and Nelly Korda were engaged. And tricked out of this retirement fund. As he was on the verge of selling his house, his children finally were able to convince him he'd been scammed.
The gist of the con goes like this: Social media user is a fan of a specific golfer; scam account impersonating that athlete reaches out and quickly moves the conversation to another platform like Telegram or WhatsApp to evade social media moderation tools; scammer offers a desirable object or experience — a private dinner, VIP access to a tournament, an investment opportunity — for a fee; untraceable payments are made via cryptocurrency or gift cards. Then, once the spigot of cash is turned off, the scammer disappears.Women's golf is by no means the only group of celebs swept up in this con, but it's apparently one of the fastest growing targeted group. Golfers and even golf influencers (whoever/whatever they are) have taken to posting warnings on their social media sites. Caveat instagrammer! And caveat golfers, while we're at it. Some of those who've been scammed put the blame on the golfers and even show up at tournaments to confront them. One golfer had to take out a restraining order against one scammed fan. Others have had to rev up their security and avoid some functions that in the past they would have happily participated in. Scary, all that.
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