In the end, it was almost easy. Which really makes one wonder why it took them so long.
85 per cent of the membership of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews agreed to admit women to golf’s most prominent and symbolic organisation in Thursday other historic vote.
Of course, 15 per cent of the membership maybe as many as 400 voted against, which still beggars belief in the 21st century, but Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A and secretary of the club, was right to call it an “overwhelming” decision.
Significantly, Dawson also got approval for the fast-tracking of a number of prominent women in golf through the R&A’s complex membership admission process.
These women believed to number 15 will all be of significant standing within golf, as much as within society, because that’s the R&A’s core value.
They’ll probably be mostly connected to the amateur game or administration of golf, as that is the club’s primary ethos.
Expect leading members of the women’s golf clubs in St Andrews, the St Rule and St Regulus. Expect figures like Carole Semple Thompson and Belle Robertson, the most celebrated women amateurs from the USA and Scotland.
Expect Judy Bell, the only USGA past president not offered R&A membership, and Louise Richardson, the only principal of St Andrews University in recent times not to be a member.
If you’re expecting a superstars or celebrities, expect to be disappointed.
Much recent attention has been focused on the similar membership policies of Open Championship venues, but it was the R&A themselves of the remaining all-male bastions that had to move first.
Unlike the others, the R&A’s standing in the game, identified as governing body of golf to all parts of the world other than the USA and Mexico even if those responsibilities were split from the actual club to a separate organisation 10 years ago made it untenable to be discriminatory in any form.
Some believed if the R&A continued to be intransigent, they risked losing their cherished status in the game. That, and some gentle pressure from the business world which sponsors the R&A many activities, made any other result in the vote unthinkable.
That pressure will now switch to The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers at Muirfield, Royal Troon and Royal St George’s.
It’s also a vindication for Dawson.
Long and wrongly identified as the bastion against change when he was in the impossible position of defending the indefensible, he has deftly and patiently piloted the vote through in his final year as chief executive and secretary.