Simply over six years later, the world’s finest feminine gamers will contest their ultimate main of the season, the AIG Girls’s Open, on the East Lothian venue this week and compete for a file prize fund of seven.3million US {dollars} (£6million).
The winner on Sunday will obtain 1.095million {dollars} (£903,000), a landmark second which appeared not possible when 36 per cent of members of the Honourable Firm of Edinburgh Golfers (HCEG), which owns and runs Muirfield, voted towards admitting girls members.
On Might 19, 2016, Muirfield was faraway from the Open Championship rota after a vote on admitting girls members narrowly failed to attain the two-thirds majority required.
The announcement of the end result was adopted minutes later by the R&A stating that Muirfield wouldn’t stage the Open whereas the coverage remained in place, a response which little doubt performed a serious position within the consequence of a second vote in March 2017, which handed by 498 votes to 123.
“I believe 2016 was an necessary time for this sport and for the R&A,” chief govt of the R&A, Martin Slumbers, mentioned in a pre-tournament press convention at Muirfield.
“I had solely been within the organisation just a few months. We had been working very onerous on a technique for the R&A that had inclusivity very a lot as part of it. We had been to start with phases of merging with the Girls Golf Union and, frankly, that merger remodeled the R&A into the place we’re immediately.
“I believe that if you suppose again over that six-year interval since then, girls’s golf has actually exploded, and it’s received an extended strategy to go but. However I do suppose that that point can be seen as pivotal in that change.
“The R&A had no duty to this championship till 2016, and, the truth is, we solely received full management of it two years in the past. In fascinated with the place will we need to place the championship, I’ve talked usually a few pyramid, with the championship on the high.
“A part of that’s big-time sport wants big-time crowds. However big-time sport additionally wants big-time venues. We had been completely centered on how will we get the perfect venues that we are able to get that imply essentially the most to golf, and stage the championship there.
“And for these of us who’ve been privileged to have the ability to play right here earlier than, it is a very particular golf course with a really particular historical past, and a course that usually offers rise to the perfect participant profitable it.
“So this was all about platform. It’s all about elevation. I believe the truth that numerous tales are being written about it means we received the best venue.”
England’s Georgia Corridor is concentrating on her second main title following her win at Royal Lytham in 2018, having additionally completed joint second behind Anna Nordqvist at Carnoustie final 12 months.
“I didn’t actually know what to anticipate,” Corridor mentioned of Muirfield. “I’ve heard actually good issues in regards to the course and it’s actually good. I believe everybody desires to win right here, particularly as a result of it’s the primary girls’s skilled occasion that we’re taking part in in.
“I believe it’s so necessary that the ladies are right here this week. It makes such a mark on girls’s golf, and AIG and the R&A have accomplished a improbable job working collectively to get the championship right here.
“I believe the ladies’s sport is certainly in the perfect place it ever has been, and I’m very comfortable to be in the midst of my profession doing that.”
