DURBAN - You make a lady wait at your peril. In the year of our Lord 2017 the Muirfield gentry have deigned to vote again to allow women to be members of one of golf’s finest venues. I repeat, it is the year of our Lord, 2017!
The second coming almost beat the first coming of the ladies to these fairways as members. Good lord.
It’s a few decades too late, some might feel; Simone de Beauvoir would say the finer sex (read second sex) have waited since the beginning of time. Let’s not even go there. It’s the wait that’s the problem.
Club captain Henry Fairweather welcomed the result of a second vote, because the first one, in May last year, did not come up to err scratch.
“This is a significant decision for a club which was founded in 1744 and retains many of the values and aspirations of its founding members.
“We look forward to welcoming women as members who will enjoy, and benefit from, the great traditions and friendly spirit of this remarkable club.”
Well, thank you ever so kindly, our Fairweather friend. I’m sure the tweed-clad, cigar-pluming gentlemen pat each other on the back as we speak, their groomed whiskers presumably a-twitch as they contemplate a new dawn of Victoria’s Secret and other foreign objects taking up permanent residency in the locker rooms, the cloak rooms, the cigar lounge, the members-only parking bays.
Congratulations are not in order. Sixteen times has Muirfield hosted the
esteemed British Open, the last of which came in 2013. For shame!
The R & A really could have “acted” sooner by removing Muirfield from the hosting list, so that the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, the founders of this establishment, could have recommended the vote sooner, albeit under duress.
In any case, now that membership is up for grabs, I won’t expect to see the she-folk to come running like they do at a Clicks sale. Take your membership and your archaic traditions and put it where the Highlands fog don’t go. That’s just me.
Good things come to those who wait, but a lady in waiting will tell you, sometimes the good thing has the after-taste of sloppy seconds.
It’s the game of thrones and woman is coming! Cue the nervous bark of a Scottish terrier.
Drinks all round! At least the Open’s back, lads.