Any female tennis players feeling resentment towards their male counterparts should thank their lucky superstars that they are not female golfers.

It is not just a few dinosaurs mumbling against equal prize money they would have to put up with, but with the entire male game seemingly working against their sport.And this was the year it was supposed to be different. The PGA Tour formed a "strategic alliance" with the LPGA Tour, with the long-term view of hosting joint tournaments; the European Tour and the Ladies European Tour staged simultaneous events at the same golf complex in Morocco; and, perhaps most notably, after 123 years of being out of its own, the Ladies Golf Union merged with the all-powerful Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.At last, women's golf was going to be able to tap into all that priceless celebrity conjured by Tiger Woods, as men's golf finally consented to pitch its might behind its fellow humans.So how has it worked out? Well, even apart from those Muirfield male-only voting buffoons sending the sport screaming in a DeLorean back to pre-suffragette times, it is not exactly going "swimmingly".In fact, the females have every right to believe that the men have actually applied more pressure on their size 12 FootJoys to keep their heads under water.The reason, of course, is the Olympics and the decision of 20-plus male golfers to skip Brazil, including the four highest-ranked golfers. This has opened a rift between the two sides of the game which could become unbreachable if the International Olympic Committee reaches the verdict that, if the world's leading quartet are not that interested, then neither is the Olympics.Stacy Lewis, the world No8, this week explained the anger felt by the women's game."They're all saying the Zika virus, but kind of the more they have spoken about it, the more I think we're seeing that it's not really that," she said."If we had a tournament at the end of the year where we could win $10-million [in the FedEx Cup play-offs], I would probably change my schedule a little bit, too, making sure I was fresh."But their decision, it affects us. It affects women's golf staying in the Olympics, and it's just awful ... We have a bunch of players who were devastated they didn't make the Olympics. So to see how upset they are by it and then to see how nonchalant the guys have been . well, it's really disappointing."The point is, the return to the Games is everything for female golf. It offers the promise of the publicity they crave, which, in turn, will lead to the sponsorship they crave and the raised purses they crave.In the big picture, female golf has been identified as the area within the sport with the largest potential for growth. We are talking about the game's future, about the survival of golf courses, about arresting those plummeting participation levels.Yet it could all be wasted by the multimillionaires in the long trousers not being bothered.Gee, thanks guys.  ©The Daily Telegraph..