Thought for the Day
The only normal people you know are the ones you don’t know very well
Where are the wimmin’?
With the inevitability of day following night, Lee Westwood missing a putt or Ian Poulter saying something daft, our attention will once again be focussed on the status of women in golf because this year’s Open is being staged at Royal Troon. This venerable and, dare we say it, backward-looking venue has a limited membership policy so we will once again be obliged to consider and debate the role of women in this game we love so much. But despite our affection for hitting a small ball around several acres of well-manicured landscape, it is difficult sometimes not to feel embarrassed, or to defend some of the ‘traditions’ of the game – such as exclusive membership policies.
Even the R&A has bowed to the inevitable, albeit a century or so late, and admitted women members but there still remains the odd throwback, such as Royal Troon, to remind us that all is not well. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. The reality is that we all have the right to free association – that is, we can choose to belong to any organisation that restricts membership to a particular group. So if you want to mix only with men, or women (and your gender allows it), you can.
This is the result of the 2010 Equality Act, the largest piece of anti-discrimination legislation to be passed in this country and what it says, in essence, is that once you have established the ‘single characteristic’ of your club, such as men-only membership, you cannot then apply other restrictions. So you could not, for example, say we want men only but they must all be one-legged. What this meant in practice is that many golf clubs had to change their policy because they allowed women members but only if certain restrictions applied. So women could join a club of their choosing but had to accept a lesser degree of membership – so they might not be able to play at weekends, for example, or certain times during the week. This was now outlawed so that, if you allowed women to join your club, you had to allow them full and equal membership with men.
So far so good but this actually caused considerable upset to many women, who rather enjoyed paying a smaller subscription fee for a reduced service as many of them did not want to play at weekends, or the busier times of the week. Their domestic arrangements allowed them the opportunity to play at quieter times, such as weekdays, and for this they paid a reduced sub. The old joke used to be: ‘Certainly we allow women members – they can play any time they like after 6pm between November and February,’ but this sort of restriction was no longer permissible.
All of which is both understandable and reasonable. The fly in the ointment is public perception. When The Open goes to a venue that, as far as the world can see, has a men-only admission policy (even if there are women’s clubs that can play the course), golf is once again seen as a reactionary, old-fashioned sport stuck in the 19th century, characterised by middle-aged, nouveau riche men who still believe that women should know their place. It may not be an accurate picture but it is a persistent one and we should be ready to change for this reason alone.
First and best
The other debate that rears its head at this time of the year is what to call our national championship. We British are sometimes accused of snobbery by referring to ‘The Open’ (never ‘The British Open’), as if it were the only one in existence – an accusation most frequently made by our former colonists in the United States.
Their irritation is easy to understand and even easier to ignore. If you are the first into the marketplace you can call your product whatever you wish, it is only those that follow who have to choose a different or modified name to distinguish their offering from yours. So by virtue of being the first, and for a while the only, national golf championship open to all comers, The Open has earned its distinction to be preceded by the definite article, with a capital ‘T’. As the Americans might say of their own predicament; time to suck it up (and we don’t complain about their hijacking ‘The Masters,’ despite many other competitions around the world having a similar title).
Quote of the Week
Golf is the only sport I know of where a player pays for every mistake. A man can muff a serve in tennis, miss a strike in baseball, or throw an incomplete pass in football and still have another chance to square himself. In golf, every swing counts against you
Lloyd Mangrum