The thing with sport these days is there are very few new ideas. Almost everything has already been tried and tested and either adopted, or discarded.

And so the news that a new mixed golf tournament, where men will compete against women for one single trophy, is not the first time this idea of a mixed tournament has been mooted.

This latest iteration will be a competition co-sanctioned by the European Tour and the Ladies European Tour which will take place in Stockholm next June and will be hosted by Swedish superstars of the game Henrick Stenson and Annika Sorenstam.

This new golf tournament is by no means the first time female athletes have been pitted against male. Over 40 years ago, Billie Jean King famously took on Bobby Riggs in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’. There are a number of sports such as motor racing which are generally not segregated. And even within golf, there has been a number of attempts by female athletes to beat men at their own game – Sorenstam was the first to enter men’s tournaments while more recently, Michelle Wie tried to make her mark in male fields.

Certainly, golf, which continuously struggles to shake off the reputation of being a game for middle-aged, middle-class white men, cannot be blamed for trying to come up with an idea which might attract a wider audience.

And with golf making it appear that shaking off the sexist tag is all but impossible, including men and women in the same competition is not the worst idea.

Yet the question persists; why do women need to compete directly against men at all?

Women’s golf, particularly in Europe, trails far behind men’s in terms of prize money, number of tour events and media coverage and so I’m not convinced the answer is to throw them in with the men.

Due to their biological advantages, male athletes, with very few exceptions, are physically superior to female athletes in terms of strength, power and speed. This means that nine times out of ten, their physical advantage means that the best male athletes in the world will beat the best female athletes.

There are some who look at women’s sport as inferior to men’s sport purely because men can run faster, throw further and jump higher.

This however, is a hugely reductive view of things.

Women should not have to defeat men in order to be valued in a sporting context. And if women’s sport continues along the lines that if they cannot beat men in head-to-head competitions then female athletes are of lesser value, we are fighting a losing battle when it comes to women’s sport gaining greater credibility.

The path to greater recognition for female sports and female athletes is not to continue to try to beat men. First of all, in the majority of cases, it is unlikely to be successful. And second of all, it is missing the point. Female sport should be valued for what it is, and not derided because the athletes are a few paces slower than their male counterparts.

Do not try to persuade me that Laura Muir’s 1500m exploits over the past few years have been any less thrilling to watch just because she is running a few seconds slower than the best male runners at the same distance.

It remains to be seen whether Stenson and Sorenstam’s new tournament is a success. It may well be. But in an attempt to increase the value of women’s sport, mixed tournaments should not become the norm.