The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews will take a significant step towards the admission of women members next week with it likely that the club’s rules will be changed to allow postal voting.
Members are set to vote on whether to accept women for the first time in the club’s 250-year history on September 18, but next week’s meeting to decide on allowing postal votes is thought to be a key factor in ensuring that women are admitted.
Previously, the Business Meeting of the club’s annual Autumn Meeting was the only forum at which club rules could be altered, and only those members directly attending the meeting could vote on any matter.
As not all of the R&A’s 2,500-membership spread around the world are able to attend the Business Meeting, the decision on admitting women could have been made by potentially a fifth or less of the total membership.
However, R&A secretary Peter Dawson, speaking at the Open Championship, said members of the club wanted as many to vote on this historic decision as possible.
“It’s clear that the majority of R&A members feel that postal voting would be appropriate in this case,” he said.
“The rules of the club do not cater for postal voting and therefore those rules would have to be changed for it to happen legitimately.”
The allowance of postal votes is key as it’s expected the large majority of international members of the R&A those who would be unlikely to be present to vote under the current rules are sympathetic to the admittance of women to the club.
Dawson, who retires as secretary of the club and chief executive of the R&A PLC next year, added that the decision would be made public on the night of the vote, probably before the result of the independence referendum on the same day is revealed.
“There will be an announcement of the result on September 18,” he said.