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Alex Salmond won’t attend Open at male-only Muirfield

The 2013 Open Championship will take place at Muirfield.
The 2013 Open Championship will take place at Muirfield.

First Minister Alex Salmond has personally stepped in to try to change the men-only policy of the golf club hosting the Open Championship.

Mr Salmond – who will not attend the competition next month – revealed he wrote to Muirfield, home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, criticising its approach.

He also suggested the Royal and Ancient (R&A), which awarded the Open Championship to Muirfield, should also have tried to force a change.

“I think the R&A should have had a good think about this, and again perhaps politely behind the scenes, but suggested to Muirfield that the public profile of being a single-sex club would be difficult,” he told Radio Forth News.

“I don’t think it helps the game to have the suggestion of a bias against women, and the greatest tournament on this planet, played on arguably the greatest golf course, should have this impression that somehow ladies, women, girls, should be second class citizens. I don’t think that’s right.”

Mr Salmond said he wrote to Muirfield in recent weeks with the Scottish Government’s sport minister Shona Robison, suggesting they take on women or perhaps establish a “ladies club”.

He added: “In the 21st century it’s not a good message for golf to suggest that women are second class citizens.”

Despite his stance, the Scottish Government’s tourism minister Fergus Ewing will attend the event in East Lothian.

A spokesman for the Open Championship said: “Whenever the championship is staged in Scotland we invite the First Minister to attend and we hope to see him again at St Andrews in 2015.”

Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A, has previously defended the decision to stage the game at Muirfield.

“To think that the R&A might say to a club like Muirfield, ‘you’re not going to have the Open any more unless you change your policy’, is frankly a bullying position that we would never take,” he said in an interview posted on the R&A website.

“Muirfield has a huge history in the Open Championship. This will be the 16th time it’s been played there. And who are we to say what they should do, because they’re behaving perfectly legally.”