People who dislike exclusivity based on discrimination against gender, race, faith, sexuality or political hue are termed ‘reasonable people’. That such xenophobia seems anachronistic in the developed world in the 21st century is a reasonable enough stance.
Wimmin like to shame bastions of maleness in an often aggressive manner, and the voice of what the Urban Dictionary terms ‘rabid psycho feminists’ is much more voluble than any Islamic / homosexual / Green Party voices complaining about elitist club memberships that one is likely to hear.
Before any such interest or pressure group brings the likes of Muirfield, Royal Troon and Royal St Georges golf clubs (and perhaps even the R&A itself) to toe its particular line, however, the laws of hard, commercial necessity will bring that about. But it will happen by proxy…
Golf clubs in Britain are dying. These establishments that relied on membership fees for their main income streams are suffering a haemorrhage in renewals, as well as the disappearance of new applications that is seeing a reported situation of fully one third of UK clubs effectively trading while insolvent. The fact of nationwide household belt-tightening will not be helping mitigate this, but every time a man, woman or child gets closer to realizing a wish to formalize a relationship with golf via a club membership, something like this comes along that is almost certain to change or defer that personal budget allocation to something else. The injustice of it is, though, that it is NOT those aforementioned institutional behemoths like Muirfield that will suffer: it is every other club in the country.
Clubs like Muirfield (host to this year’s Open) have become global destinations of overriding importance to players of golf. Battalions of people on waiting lists to be accepted as members will ensure these clubs will likely never suffer real economic hardship or the cultural isolation of society’s reasonable people. But while aspiring club members are happily beguiled and inspired by major sporting competitions hosted by these iconic courses, most will target clubs in their own region to apply and happily invest in membership fees, debentures, proshop sales, coaching, consumables, entertaining and so on. Every time that deviant or unreasonable behaviour like gender-prejudice rears its ugly head, however, those plans and budgets earmarked for joining golf clubs are shelved.
It’s a hackneyed old cliché that golf is elitist, but even that kind of terminology is benign when compared to words like stupid, boorish, hateful, blinkered, feudal, sociopathic, needless.. the list goes on. Possibly the worst description the game of golf could be given today, though, is irrelevant. Worse than any pejorative or mocking description, being labelled as simply very unimportant is more likely to drive a stake through the heart of the game than anything else.
Women, kids and families all deserve to become acquainted with the joys of golf: its discipline, its motivation, its sociability, its competitiveness. The institution is slowly killing itself, however. And while its giants have their sclerotic hands tight on the tiller of the ship heading for the rocks, their own places in the lifeboats are assured. The reasonable majority, meanwhile, stand on the shore disinterested and looking the other way.
domobyrne 