The year 2021 will go down as yet another when sexist behaviour at golf clubs was in noticeable decline. Where, not so long ago, jibes about women golfers were commonplace and certain to raise a laugh, the laughter has dwindled. Also, you can pretty much guarantee there will be someone in the audience who will shoot the culprit a pitiful look.
That much, he might be able to shrug off. However, things are altogether different when the appalled looks come from his children. Kids of today, unlike their grandparents and even their parents to a certain extent, are 100 percent aware of what is acceptable and what is not in a modern world where anyone who makes light of the need for equality will find himself in trouble.
In a sporting context, there was the classic case of a girl called Millie and her father which was aired on BBC4 a couple of weeks ago. Journalist Manish Pandey interviewed the pair on the subject of how Millie had fallen out with her dad because of his bigoted behaviour at the football games they had once enjoyed together.
Neil, as the father was called, was making an all-out confession. He admitted to having been all three of “racist, sexist and homophobic” and said it was “the look of disgust” on his daughter’s face which had made him realise he had to change his ways. “I didn’t want to be that sort of role model for her,” he said.
By way of a footnote, he and Millie have resumed watching their team in tandem.
There must be thousands of Millies and their brothers who have had to pull up their fathers for their sexist ways in golf – and generally done their bit to help improve the game’s image in the process.
“You used to hear them complain that a women’s four-ball had gone out ahead of them and that it was all going to take forever. That, though, is something I haven’t heard in a long time. … Maybe they’ve come to see that it simply isn’t true.”
Ken Goodwin
In which connection, if only those 33 Muirfield members who stopped a “Yes” vote to women membership from going through in 2016 had asked their kids to vet the letter they sent to the rest of the membership, it would have spared the club any amount of the ensuing embarrassment. To recap, their letter stated that their “foursomes and speedy play” might be endangered if women came on the scene, as would their luncheon arrangements. (Horror of horrors, they feared salads might appear on the menu.) And all of this was summed up with the line: “It will take a very special lady golfer to be able to do all the things that are expected of them … and the ladies’ membership as a whole may not meet this standard.”
Ken Goodwin is the secretary of Prestwick Golf Club, and a member of Glenbervie. His wife plays off 12 and their two daughters are single-figure golfers. Hence the reason he has always tuned into what men are saying. “You used to hear them complain that a women’s four-ball had gone out ahead of them and that it was all going to take forever,” Goodwin said. “That, though, is something I haven’t heard in a long time. … Maybe they’ve come to see that it simply isn’t true. I know as much from having to race ’round with my family.”
On a slightly different tack, Dame Laura Davies would often talk of how, when she played in a pro-am, there was always one man in the group who wanted nothing so much as to go home with a story of how he had outdriven her. We can, incidentally, take it for granted it only happened once, and that he was inclined to remain silent on how Davies had out-hit him on the other 17 holes.
A few years on and you would have to suspect that same fellow might struggle to find anyone at home who would be remotely impressed with his proud boast. Indeed, you can picture his wife and kids raising their eyes before carrying on with their own chat. Just as likely, though, is that that same chap is now a convert to the women’s game.
Even if he is only going to admit as much through gritted teeth, he has probably had to acknowledge there is something in the old cliché about a man being able to learn more from watching the top women than the top men.
Play at the recent Solheim Cup in Toledo, Ohio, showed the women hitting the ball a country mile and hitting it straight; it showed a player like Lizette Salas enjoying much the same degree of accuracy with a hybrid as her opposite numbers on the men’s tours might demonstrate with a wedge; and it showed how the women of today have spells of knocking in 5-footers as surely as they deal with 2-footers. (Just revisit some of the pressure putts that were holed by both sides in the Solheim Cup.)
For the most hopeful message of all vis-à-vis the changing ways of the game’s misogynists, you only have to look at what has happened at Muirfield since it was wiped from the Open rota following that “No” to women vote five years ago.
The club was back in favour when a second vote in 2017 was overwhelmingly in favour of women members. Going on from there, a delicious twist came in August of last year when the R&A announced Muirfield as the venue for next year’s AIG Women’s Open.
Who wouldn’t bet that those 33 dissenters will join their fellow members in loving every minute of it?
Top: The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers at Muirfield voted to allow women members in 2017.
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