[dn's toc blog...give me a break]

Daniel is bang on. I liken it to the Annika Sorenstam situation in 2003. Annika did not QUALIFY for the Colonial she was a sponsor exemption I believe, VJ Singh and others were very critical of the PGA tour simply because she didn't QUALIFY like everyone else.

VJ is classless, and it had nothing to do with qualifying, because sponsors exemptions have been around for years and had been given to men and VJ never said boo. He just has a hang up about women.Completely different than this situation, where the exepmtion was made AFTER the rules were announced.

[dn's toc blog...give me a break]

I dont post much either, but I agree with DN that this is an important point.Like DN, I dont have a big issue with the invitations, per se. I can understand if they had said there would be three - or even five - "at large" seats. This is done in golf and in tennis (in terms of invitations offered to someone who didnt otherwise qualify) and I dont think anyone would have a problem with the three top bracelet winners getting the three "byes".The problem is changing the rules after the game has started.I think your emphasis on the equity, DN, detracts from the simplest and most straigh-forward problem - the change of the rules after the game had begun. That's really all that is relevant here, IMO.