With Augusta, the most famous of the all-male golfing bastions in the United States, having admitted two lady members in Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore, kindred establishments in Europe will probably be shaken into following suit. If that is not just wistful thinking, we can look ahead to the day when future generations will listen, wide-eyed, to stories of the bad old days.
Stories of how as great a golfer as Marley Spearman – a double British champion – once walked through the revolving doors of the clubhouse at Royal Liverpool and found herself ushered out on the same revolution; of how women were not allowed to play at certain clubs until after four o’clock on a Saturday or, to put it another way, when the best of the winter light was gone. And of how, in a particularly demeaning instance, a club in the English Midlands had a white line painted across the floor of the lounge. Men were free to go either side of it but women had to stay on their side of the court, with the barman serving as a somewhat ill-tempered umpire.
At Little Aston, a fine parkland course near Birmingham, a terrace in front of the clubhouse was at one point the preserve of male members, while the same applied to a perfectly-positioned balcony above the 18th green at Royal Lytham. In the case of the latter, it was very definitely not a matter of a gallant male membership fearing for the women’s safety.
Golf historians will further relate the tale of how Joyce Wethered, arguably the best British woman golfer of all time, used to warm her hands on the radiators of members’ cars at Prince's Golf Club in Kent as she waited for her brother and his friends to emerge from the clubhouse. And never mind that this winner of five English Championships in a row had probably thrashed every one of her companions on the course that day.
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