I was looking at the website of the Gulf Times, the main English-language newspaper in Qatar, the UAE’s neighbor to the north and west.

And while searching out some information on the women’s tennis tournament going on there, I happened upon a “lede” I just have to share.

Not because it’s good. But because it is astonishingly retro in how it presents female athletes.

This belongs to another era. I was thinking 1973, thereabouts. Though even by then most editors (in the U.S., anyway) would have kept their reporters from writing this.

Anyway, check out this astonishingly inappropriate introduction to a story:

If you didn’t follow the link, I will type it up for you here.

Women are unpredictable at the best of times, but hand them a tennis racquet and they take this wonderful quality to the next level.

It’s called mayhem, and sports journalists love them for that! 

The author apparently is the sports editor of the Gulf Times. And this is their main daily news story on the WTA event being staged in Doha.

It’s “awesome” (as Leah described it) on several levels.

One, that all women fall under the heading of “unpredictable.”

Two, that we men are big enough to love women for their endearing flaw.

And third, the assumption in the second graf that sports journalists are not women. Which is pretty much the case in the Gulf, but even a guy in Qatar should have heard of female sports journos.

I had to share. Seeing a piece of journalism straight out of a half-century ago … that’s like finding a dinosaur living next door.