Golf move should just be the tee-off

Women will be happy when genuinely welcomed by men not just accepted through gritted teeth.

Was it a present for Mother’s Day, pressure from sponsors, a challenge from champion Catriona Matthews or the Muirfield boycott by Big Lec?

We’ll never know. But the news that the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews is set to back a vote to accept women has made headlines round the world and dragged Scotland’s sporting image into the 21st Century just in time for the Commonwealth Games. Good timing.

If R&A members support change at their September AGM, the club’s long-standing and shameful ban on women members will be history.

Since the R&A is Scotland’s most prestigious golf club and the sport’s governing body, other male-only clubs in Scotland must surely follow. It’s only taken centuries but who’s holding a grudge?

Possibly quite a few. I wonder how many women golfers are on the edge of their seats waiting to join.

It’s hard to know because the whiff of exclusion and privilege around golf has never made me want to play a round despite being an active, outdoorsy kind of gal.

I did have a go in the beautiful, no-nonsense surroundings of the Old Tom Morris course at Askernish on South Uist. But even they have just a handful of women members.

Perhaps the blokes at the R&A have held out against modernity for so long no modern, independent-minded gal would be seen dead in regulation golf gear or the bloke-oriented club house?

Funnyman Groucho Marx hated the idea of joining a club that would have him as a member. But maybe the women of today are different.

Do gals really want to leaf through Shooting Times, accidentally take ‘the major’s seat’ or leave the room at dinner while the gents ‘pass the port’?

Of course the R&A blokes may be a bit more modern than all of that but how should we know?

Their view of women as second class citizens was forged in the days before women got the vote and that was 1918!

Golf widows may not mind, but who except the naturally disruptive or genuinely golf-mad could relax amongst guys discussing the latest rugby results, stock market prices or a risqu visit to an Amsterdam sauna twenty years ago?

The prestige of the R&A may melt some female objections. But other bastions of male privilege haven’t exactly been stampeded with female applicants when they finally relented.

I imagine bold Scottish female golf champ Catriona Matthew will have the form filled in. She tackled the R&A last year when it refused to ‘bully’ men-only clubs like Muirfield into admitting women.

Catriona said; “It’s tough for (the R&A) to tell Muirfield what to do when they don’t have women members themselves. They should lead by example.”

And they have. But most gals like most men want to spend leisure time with friends or family. Who wants to be the sole token woman?

I know, I know. When are women ever pleased? Actually it’s simple.

When we are genuinely welcomed by men able to adapt to the presence of women not just through gritted teeth. And that means more than putting Babycham behind the bar and certain machines in the loo.

It means an end to putting women golfers out at 6.30am so they won’t hold up the men. It means changing pecking orders so sporting talent and fun not gender and who you know matter most.

After years of effort 20% of Askernish Open entrants in August this year will be women. Well done the Gaels.

The R&A deserve credit for finally backing change. But in September they’ll have a harder task persuading women they’re serious.