Last November, Emily Wang, a regular member of the Stanford University women’s golf team, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and today she is studying 19th-century history at Oxford (England). Her research could take her to such fascinating places as Vienna, Paris, Istanbul and St. Petersburg, but what about the litany of fine venues on her golf schedule? Royal Porthcawl, Walton Heath and Royal St George’s, to name just three.
On Friday and Saturday of last week, Wang was at Formby as only the fifth female to participate in the Varsity match (Oxford vs. Cambridge) in the 133rd edition of what is the oldest university fixture in the golfing world. “I feel so honoured,” she told Global Golf Post. The men of Oxford, for their part, felt honoured to have someone of her calibre in their ranks. Apart from being an out-and-out delight, Wang won the 2014 Xiamen Challenge on the China LPGA Tour at 16 and is currently playing off a handicap of plus-5.
So how is it that the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, an all-male society so often mentioned in the same breath as the likes of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, Prestwick Golf Club and the R&A, became the first body of its kind to call a halt to its men-only policy?
Where Augusta National, to use the modern vernacular, “pulled a fast one” on the other men’s clubs of the day by announcing in 2012 that it had taken two female members on board, the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society made its move back in 1987. That was when Cambridge had a player in Fiona Edmond who was simply too good to be left out. (Oddly enough, they have never been congratulated on what they did.)
Not everyone in the Society – it takes in all past and present players – approved, and Edmond soon knew all about it. Indeed, one of their number, a Colonel Blimp of a man, wasted no time in making his feelings known. (The Cambridge English Dictionary’s definition of a Colonel Blimp is “an old man who has old-fashioned ideas and believes he is very important.”)
“He was muttering away on a nonstop basis and hovering behind me on every tee,” said Edmond, a two-time English Senior Women's Amateur champion, a mother of six, and someone whose Green Island Gardens, which she started from scratch, is open to the public. “I was concentrating too hard to know quite what it was all about, but the rest of the team couldn’t wait to tell me. He’d been saying how ridiculous it was that a woman should be there at all.”
On a rather more entertaining note, Edmond, who lost both of her matches in ’87 but did the opposite the following year, can remember the nervous giggles of those Oxford players whose biggest fear was that they might find themselves drawn to play against her. (Wang, incidentally, lost her matches over the weekend, but she, too, may have better luck next time around.)
Today, everything has changed. On Friday and Saturday, there were no mutterings, no giggles.
The Colonel Blimps have moved on, in one way or another, and the match of ’22 featured some fine golf, played in wonderful humour and the best of weather. At the same time, Formby could have manotde for more friendly hosts as Oxford won, 9-6.
That Formby is still an all-male golf club may sound a bit improbable in the circumstances. For the briefest of explanations, the women, who have their own much-loved course and clubhouse, would sooner stay with the status quo.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Lewine Mair