No less than slow play and long putters, news on discriminatory issues has provided the Fourth Estate with an endless font of good material.
Years ago, there was a delicious furore as Liz Kahn, a well-known writer-cum-women’s rights activist had the nerve to walk up to the bar at R&A headquarters. She asked for a drink, only for the men summarily to escort her from the premises.
At Augusta, there were years when Martha Burke, an American version of Kahn but a rather more strident one, would organise rallies both outside the gates of the club and in the town.
Every year, when the Open has been staged at an all-male venue, the tabloid press have seized the moment. Why would the R&A take their championship to a club where there are no lady members Are they not sending out all the wrong messages?
At Royal St George’s last year, Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, hit on a more than adequate riposte. Whatever his inner feelings might be on the theme, he looked out across a room packed tight with media men and observed that he didn’t see too many women in their midst.
He had a point. Sports editors and their staff have remained as stubbornly all-male as the most misogynistic of golf clubs.
Personally, I have always seen the men who hold sway at the all-male clubs and sports editors as roughly on a par and, on one occasion, was faced with falling out with both species at once.
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