I’m feeling very cross.

This is 2018 and we’re in the middle of Major season in golf.  Three weeks ago the first US Senior Women’s Open was held at Chicago Golf Club and Dame Laura Davies put on a peerless display winning by ten shots.  A couple of weeks ago we were enthralled by Francesco Molinari at Carnoustie.  Last week we saw Tom Watson shooting his age round the Old Course at St Andrews in the men’s Senior British Open and this week I’m at Royal Lytham & St Annes for the Ricoh Women’s British Open, the fourth of the women’s five majors in the game.  So, why am I cross?

It was impossible to see any coverage of Laura’s win – I certainly didn’t find any – and if you cannot come to Lytham, and do not have a Sky Sports package, the only sight you will have of the world’s best women golfers this week is a paltry hour on the BBC, squeezed in either side of midnight.  Disappointed doesn’t begin to cover it.

Then I picked up the September 2018 issue of Golf World magazine.  There are 130 pages of informed, interesting and well researched pieces on golf.  Two pages are on women’s golf – TWO!  There is a huge section to help us all improve our games with tips and advice from 14 different professionals.  How many female professionals are featured?  You guessed it – none.  And not a single article written by a woman either.  I thought the clue was in the title – Golf World.  Aren’t women part of the world?  It’s really just Golf for Men, isn’t it?

All this is taking place at a time when the R&A have announced a Women in Golf Charter, stating their joint ambition with other members of the golf industry is to increase the numbers of women playing and working in the game.  Quite how that fits in with having no golf on terrestrial television is a puzzle to me.  Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the R&A,  is driving the initiative and promises “measures designed to achieve positive change”.  They are planning to increase “overall investment in women’s, girls’ and mixed golf to £80 million over the next ten years”.

Then, last week, a Gender Equality Summit kicked off proceedings at the Ladies’ Scottish Open and Martin Gilbert, CEO Aberdeen Standard Investments and title sponsor of the tournament, was fulsome in his support, saying his company was “keen to see as much equality in sport as we can”.

This is all good news and hopefully not just all talk, yet when I look around me at our golf clubs, our TV coverage, our print journalism, I feel discouraged.  Golf is so heavily stacked towards a white male demography and does not for one moment reflect the world we live in.  The women’s game is not boring, it’s not inferior to the men’s and it is at least as entertaining.  It is bursting with fabulous role models for us all.

On the plus side I was hugely cheered to learn this week about initiatives from England Golf and Irish Ladies’ Golf entitled Women and Girls’ Golf Week 2018 which celebrates females of all ages and their involvement in the sport.  We can read inspiring stories of career women and volunteers and each day a new topic is covered culminating with a round-up on Sunday, the day the next Ricoh Women’s British Open Champion will be crowned.  Go to the respective websites – englandgolf.org, golfnet.ie, ricohwomensbritishopen.com – and be inspired.

All this makes me realise how imperative it is for women’s golf to have more support from within the industry.  We need more of the shakers and movers within the game shining a light on women in golf and giving our professional athletes the platform they deserve.  More exposure will generate more interest and subsequent increased female participation at grass roots level can guide our sport to being more family friendly with all the attendant social and health benefits. The game needs to be grown from the top down as well as from the bottom up.  These decision makers who are ignoring women’s golf and keeping our profile virtually non-existent wouldn’t get away with this behaviour in the boardroom nowadays.

I learned ten days ago that a three-time Solheim Cup player recently received a request from a club manufacturer to return the product that she wasn’t using.  I could scarcely believe my ears!    Could you imagine that request going to a three-time Ryder Cupper?  Of course not!  There really should be no place for these discriminatory practices that are still all around us.  Women are no longer willing to be second-class citizens and that goes for us golfers too.

There’s still a huge mountain to climb, I’m afraid, but, crampons on, ice picks in hand, we’ll keep on going.

 

I’m a bit out of my comfort zone this week because I’m sitting writing this in the press room at the last Ricoh Women’s British Open (new sponsors to be announced in due course) at Royal Lytham & St Annes, not at the dining room table at home.  It’s late afternoon, not after midnight, The Proclaimers are not belting out at full blast and there’s no sign of the red wine writing mixture.

It’s hard to believe that I used to spend my life in places like this, not many of them as posh as this one, hammering away on the keyboard, battling to control my tendency to convolution and convey a flavour of the day in the required number of words (not many usually) and trying not to panic at the thought of the looming deadline.  Deadlines always loom don’t they?  It’s the nature of the beast.

 

I’m keeping an eye on the golf, I have a vague idea who’s leading, who’s already heading for home and who’s still in the thick of things despite an untimely glitch – usually, at Lytham, bunker related – but the relaxing thing is that I really don’t need to know very much at all.  This blog is often a fact-free zone and so far this week, I’ve been catching up with friends I haven’t seen for a while at a venue that is one of my favourites.  Lytham is SUCH a good golf course, a fierce test even when the weather is relatively benign and there are always loads of people here, in a part of the world where golf is a long-established passion.

This championship, which started in 1976, was first held in this neck of the woods in 1979, at Southport & Ainsdale (S&A), just down the road and I remember Alison Sheard, of South Africa, holding up her Pretty Polly candlesticks (the winner’s trophy) in front of hordes of people.  Maureen played as an amateur and I was impressed by the numbers who turned out to see the women play.  Our friends Hilary and Michael Edwards lived nearby and Michael, who had played for Ireland, caddied for Mo.

I seem to remember that Michael made his debut at Muirfield in the early 1960s and in the foursomes was paired with the great Joe Carr against Reid Jack, a formidable Scot who’d been Amateur champion and another luminary.  Michael, the rookie, recalled that the rough was waist high and by the turn Joe, who could be wild, had lost four of his (Michael’s) golf balls.  That was in the days when balls were precious items, not handed out like sweeties on the 1st tee and I fear Ireland did not win that match.

Anyway, I digress but I did bump in to someone who goes back as far as I do and well remembered Alison and her candlesticks.  Jane Allen, who’s from Royal Portrush, also confirmed her great age by mentioning the name Barry Edwards, the man who was in charge of what is now the LET (Ladies’ European Tour) in the days when it was sponsored by Carlsberg and there were numerous tournaments all over Britain and Ireland.  Jane remembers tournaments at Portstewart and Portrush and organising a last-minute birthday cake for Sheard.  The baker came up trumps with a South African theme that reduced the birthday girl to tears.  Bet she still remembers that.

There have always been prodigies in golf, kids who’ve been brilliant little and have lived with great expectations.  Some live up to them and train on after burning brightly early, others don’t and struggle to cope with the adult game.  Some, like Michelle Wie, blow hot and cold, winning the odd big thing but fighting what seems to be a losing battle against injury.  The Hawaiian pulled out on the 12th hole in the first round because of a painful wrist injury that wouldn’t sit nag, nag, nagging away in the background but erupted onto centre stage, refusing to be ignored.  Like many sports people she’s a one-person A&E, accommodating aches and pains to achieve her dreams but such single-minded dedication takes its toll, physically and mentally.

For other people success comes a little later in life and, if I’m in charge of the trophy, even later than it should.  Colin Callander was, in his heyday, one of the AGW’s (Association of Golf Writers) better golfers and has won most of our trophies many times.  Last November, at the sainted Brancaster, Royal West Norfolk, he and his wife Jill won the coveted Pat Ward-Thomas Trophy, a foursomes event.  Colin has won the title many times but it was a first for Jill and she was denied the glory of receiving the silverware at the time because no one knew where it was.   To my shame – because I’d denied all knowledge of its whereabouts – the trophy turned up at Maureen’s, so I polished it up  and, very, very belatedly it was presented to one half of the winning team.  Sorry you weren’t there Jill but congrats on the arrival of Clara, the first grandchild.

Footnote (literally):  Being in need of new golf shoes – my current ones are falling apart at the seams – do I play safe or do I spend a small fortune on a swanky, swoon-inducing, swing-enhancing Italian pair…..A dilemma for the weekend.