Golf is a social game – why should men and women play separately?
I’m about to reveal something that may shock a few of you. At my club, men and women play in the same competitions.
There, I’ve said it. The sky hasn’t fallen in.
We put the tee in the ground, pop a ball on it and hit it. Sometimes we make a putt. And we have a nice time too.
We don’t worry about the leaderboard, because we know CSS – or the Stableford adjustment – will take care of it.
I’m puzzled as to why this doesn’t happen everywhere.
I find it bizarre that some clubs still restrict tee-times, and their competitions, in favour of both men and women.
It’s been a decade since the Equality Act but some clubs have yet to really get on board with it.
You can still drop into a lot of places and find a Saturday morning where men have the priority, or a Ladies’ Day where the gents have to wait in the clubhouse.
Just because the membership might be happy with that – if I had a pound for every time someone said to me ‘the ladies like having their own day’ I could buy a course – doesn’t make it correct or fair for all.
Equality isn’t meant to be a choice.
My daughter is two-and-a-half. I truly hope she will one day follow me onto the fairways and take up this wonderful game.
I’d find it impossible to justify to her why we couldn’t play together because an archaic set of competition conditions demanded we competed in gender specific tournaments.
This isn’t the elite. We’re all hackers together and that’s what the handicap system is supposed to sort out.
History, and tradition, is often cited by those who wish to stall change. Anyone who challenges that status quo is somehow arguing for the destruction of ‘standards’.
But while we continue to segregate players into tournaments, and tees, based on nothing other than gender, how can we hope to truly grow the game?
Golf is a social game. We should all be able to play together – at any time of our choosing and in any format.
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