Vijah Singh caught all kinds of flak for saying essentially the same thing about female golfers. Annika Sorenstam was the Godzilla of women’s golf at the time.
They were batting around the idea of having her compete with men. Singh stepped up and said he didn’t think it was a good idea. Some of the things done to courses to make them competitive for PGA events are barbaric. They don’t do those things in prep for an LPGA event.
They went ahead and invited her, and I think Sorenstam ended up either at the bottom or very nearly the bottom.
It was almost exactly as you say.
And Bobby Riggs intentionally lost to Billie Jean King.
And remember BJK was allowed to use the doubles sidelines, whereas Riggs wasn’t.
Ditto for tennis. The best woman tennis players in the world practice against men. One of them (I don’t remember which one) said that the 100th ranked man in professional tennis could beat the best of the women 90% of the time.