Was it for this that Emmeline Pankhurst agitated and argued on behalf of women's social and political rights? Did the Moss Side revolutionary dream of the day when womankind could roll the old jeep across the hallowed gravel chippings of Portmarnock golf club, reverse parking with impunity before taking a firm grip of both the struggle for equality and the Palmer Patent Fork Shaft Wood in order to drive a golf ball into the salty air from a tee dedicated to – nay, reserved for – women? Was it really for this that the struggle began?
Well, yes. No. Kind of. News this week that the all-male membership at Portmarnock golf club had voted to allow women members was greeted with the inevitable combination of sardonic mirth, righteous indignation and low whistles at the cost of said privilege from the vast majority of Irish people who have more pressing concerns. For golfey people, this was a landmark moment and for non-golfey people it was scarcely a moment at all. You choose your Titleist and you take your choice.
It was a sort of no-win scenario for the beleaguered gentlemen members of Portmarnock. They voted for change, finally opening the membership books to women and thus ending 127 years of blissful male-only escapism: just the guys, the lads, the chaps, hanging out and chewing the fat and savouring all that history and mahogany and speechifying.
Of course, news that they had girded their loins and opened their doors, so to speak, left them vulnerable to derision and sarky letters fired off to these pages. On RTÉ news, they were described as ‘dinosaurs’. Now, the venerable news programme is plain wrong on this one. Check the Portmarnock charter. Absolutely no reptilian, from the Triassic or any other period, has ever been permitted to join. Portmarmock, see, was always just the men, escaping the quotidian and trying to enjoy a Happiness Is A Cigar Called Hamlet vibe, for a few hours. Was it too much to ask?
Clearly.
The golf course has always been a perfect battleground in the struggle for equality and recognition. It was, for instance, in a fairly appalled tone that the October 1912 edition of the American Golfer informed its readers of the shenanigans occurring just then on the golf courses of Britain – and specifically at the Dornoch course where the prime minster of the day, Herb Asquith, had been enjoying a pleasant 18 holes with home secretary Reginald McKenna.
Out of the blue, the pair was accosted (on the 10th) by Ms Mitchell and Ms Dowey, both suffragettes, there to protest the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragettes who had gone on hunger strike. Asquith was jostled and yelled at. The home secretary admonished the protestors for forgetting “to behave like a lady”, the PM wisely kept mum and the local caddies apparently enjoyed the whole spectacle no end. Around the same time, King George himself awoke from a splendid night’s sleep at Balmoral to find the flags of the links course had been removed and replaced with the colours of the suffragettes.
“Everywhere on Saturday you see men streaming way into the country for the weekend to play golf,” Pankhurst explained in her celebrated ‘Freedom or Death’ speech, delivered in the Parsons theatre in Hartford, Connecticut in 1913.
“They so monopolise the golf links that they have made a rule that although ladies may play golf all week, the golf links are entirely reserved for men on Saturday and Sunday. They are not, ladies, putting their heads together thinking how best they can govern the country for you, what good laws they can make for you and for the world.”
She elaborated on the suffragettes’ tactical practice of cutting up greens and destroying them with acid as part of the “method of waking the Britisher up”.
Five years later, the Parliament Act allowed women aged 30 and over to vote: it took a further decade to grant the vote on the same age terms as men – and Britain’s golf courses were left unsullied once more.
But for over a century, golf and the all-male clubhouses have hosted an ongoing war of wills between the sexes. It has been a complex relationship. Golf officialdom has always worn its sexism as a badge of honour. Consider the advice offered by leading amateur of the day, Horace Hutchinson, in written response to an enquiry from Blanche Martin about establishing a ladies' golfing union in the 1890s.
“DON’T” he urged, in apparent alarm.
“My reasons? Well? 1. Women never have and never can unite to push any scheme to success. They are bound to fall out and quarrel on the smallest or no provocation: they are built that way.”
Do you think they listened? Fat chance. The ladies' union was set up within weeks. Half a century later, little had changed. "No woman has ever entered the club house and, praise God, no woman ever will," declared Royal Liverpool's secretary in 1946 after refusing admission to Isabel Maria 'Toots' Estanguet de Moss, who, in addition to owning the best name of the 20th century, was the wife of Henry Cotton, the three times Open champion.
Against that, women took to golf in greater numbers as the century gathered pace. When Bobby Jones, the godfather of the game, was asked about the perfect golf swing, he spoke not of a competitor but of Joyce Wethered, the 1920s sensation of the women's game. The Ladies PGA tour was established in 1950 and looked instantly progressive in comparison to the male association – admittedly not the highest bar. Augusta allowed women members in 2012 but has steadfastly refused to consider hosting a women's Masters tournament. But sooner or later that, too, will happen. The cigar rooms have been stormed.
Portmarnock is just the hinges blown off another little door. Emmeline Pankhurst would surely approve. She did not play golf herself, by the way. She had too much to do.
