Maybe Muirfield turned over-identified with the indefensible exclusion of ladies from many areas of the game. The Honourable Firm of Edinburgh Golfers weren’t the one culprits – removed from it – but they took many of the flak within the final six years.
That’s prior to now, fortunately. And having the ability to talk about what it means to be a lady taking part in skilled golf is one other barrier being introduced down.
This week, of all weeks in golf, is when girls shouldn’t should apologise for who they’re anymore.
“We don’t discuss this typically sufficient,” stated Aberdeen’s Michele Thomson, who performs her second AIG Girls’s Open this week, about her struggles on the primary day of the Girls’s Scottish Open final week.
“Final week, I had a extremely dangerous first day. When it’s ‘your week’, that kind of factor occurs. You don’t have a lot feeling.
“Lydia Ko got here out and spoke about it earlier than, that was one thing that occurred to me on Thursday.
“Friday I felt so a lot better. These items occur. I’m simply glad that isn’t taking place this week!”
Former World No 1 Ko spoke on dwell TV within the US final month about how having her interval affected her efficiency.
With the identical topic raised at Wimbledon this 12 months and likewise on the latest girls’s Euros, it’s maybe one other indication of how pointless limitations are being introduced down in girls’s sport eventually.
Michele is ready to focus this week on the joys of taking part in her second Girls’s Open, what she at all times dreamed of as just a little woman.
“The one at Troon was actually particular, and it felt like a significant, however not like this one does,” she stated. “There have been no followers at Troon. I’m excited to have household and mates come right here and assist.”
As a Scot, Michele says she felt the exclusion from locations like Muirfield extra acutely.
“I’ve by no means felt unwelcome anyplace, actually,” she stated. “Nevertheless it’s a Scottish course, and as a Scot you don’t wish to see that, that ladies will not be welcome.
“We’ve nonetheless received an extended method to go on the subject of girls in sport, I feel. However it’s good to have a Girls’s Open right here, they usually actually have gone above and past in making us really feel welcome this week.
