Portmarnock Golf Club is in the spotlight for its attitude to women golfers.In the run-up to the Irish Open, Martyn Turner looks at golf's history of discrimination
They're playing the Irish Open at Portmarnock next week. I'm delighted. The last few years they have been playing the Irish Open on big, green, soft, new, not-too-difficult golf courses. Now we are back on a proper baked-hard, yellow-grass, windy beast of a course. Linksland golf.
Proper golf.
And Portmarnock, hailed as a beacon of anti-female prejudice, is a more typical golf club than some of the well-known modern venues we use in Ireland for golf tournaments. And typically it discriminates, as most old golf courses discriminate. The new ones are open to everyone, black, white, yellow, green, male, female, Muslim, Catholic, Jew or Presbyterian . . . as long as you have a few hundred thousand euro in your back pocket.
Portmarnock discriminates against women. They can't join the club as members. But they can play golf there. And they do and they play very cheaply, a token fee I'm told. I should be so lucky.
Royal Dublin used to be the same. Wives and friends could potter around for nothing, they even had women's tees there last time I looked. But they couldn't become members. The place where they are playing the Open (the British Open, the Championship, call it what you will) this weekend is similarly inclined - women are invisible. A story is told that a member was standing on the first tee with his wife waiting to play when another member drove into the car park.
"Ah," he said, looking across at them, "I see you are on your own, mind if I join you?"
Whisper it quietly but Formby Ladies Golf Club discriminates against men. Has done so for the last 100 years. If your chromosomes are the wrong ones you can't join as a member (but you can fork over a great wodge of sterling and play there if you are a chap).
The average Irish golf club, like the one I belong to, used to class women as associate members. They paid less money and in return they got to play on the course on Tuesdays and for an hour or so at the weekend. Men weren't allowed to be associate members although some might have welcomed paying less for less access. Since the EU and the Government got involved women can now be full members of our golf club and most other golf clubs. They pay the same as us and in return . . . well, I may be wrong but as far as I can tell, they can still only play on Tuesdays and for an hour or so at the weekend.
Some of the old clubs discriminated against the poor and the socially unconnected. They said that to apply for membership at Royal County Down was to exclude yourself automatically. It was by invitation only. Yet these courses had attached clubs that could play the course (the whole point as far as I can see) and pay only a fraction of the fees of the full members. Thus Royal County Down had Mourne golf club attached and Royal Portrush had Rathmore golf club playing over the same ground.
Dún Laoghaire used to have an Artisans' club. On the course I grew up on, a small nine-holer on the edge of Epping Forest, we had Artisans who got free golf in return for light greenkeeping duties.
Not content with barring the women and the indigent, some clubs got it into their heads to exclude Jewish people and, of course, America was famous for colour bars. Tiger seems to have got that rule done away with.
The Jews got round the problem by starting their own courses; there was one in Dublin and as late as the 1960s they built one near me in Essex in exasperation after a local course (run at the time, as I recall, by a coterie of Irish dentists) continually denied them membership. The same course wouldn't let my wife (then girlfriend and caddie) into their clubhouse 'cos she was a girl. Those were the days.
Many courses used to discriminate against the non-Christian in other ways by closing on Sundays or on Christmas Day. I always thought it possible to start a club for fundamentalist Jews, Muslims and Christians. As they enjoy different Sabbaths they would play golf on different days and thus they could happily cohabit without actually having to meet each other.
Other clubs discriminate against the fashionable. Blue denim (but not any other coloured denim), however clean, neat and expensive, is a no-no at most clubs within an hour's drive of Dublin, but it is quite all right to wear Rupert Bear trousers and a Day-Glo pink shirt - (I do, I do) - just so long as the shirt has a collar, of course. No tee shirts allowed on the tee, and if you wear shorts make sure your socks are the right length. And if you wear shorts in some clubs make sure you're not a woman 'cos only trousers and skirts are allowed for them (well, they should be grateful they are allowed to play at all).
If you want a drink, in some places, you will need to wear a tie. If you want to eat make sure you have a jacket as this is an apparent aid to digestion in some clubs. And if you're a professional . . . well, in days of yore golf professionals weren't allowed in many golf clubhouses either but times have changed and they slowly continue to change. So when you watch the professionals play in the Irish Open remember that the only bar they put on their members is talent. If you are good enough it doesn't matter what colour, creed, sex or age you are - you can play.
And please also remember not to blame golf for the illiberality of the clubs. It's a great game ruined only, from time to time, by the strange, petty-minded people who play it.