You may see this hashtag on social media soon – #next10years.
It’s a campaign aiming to have women’s golf get parity with men in terms of media coverage and prize money in the next decade.
It’s a pretty ambitious aim, especially the money. The most lucrative women’s golf event this year was the US Women’s Open, won by Michelle Wie at Pinehurst with a total prizefund of $4 million – exactly half that of the men’s version won by Martin Kaymer just the week before.
The US Open is actually pretty well rewarded in terms of women’s golf. A better example might be the LPGA Championship compared to the PGA; Rory McIlroy won $1.8 million for the men’s at Valhalla in August, Inbee Park just $337,000 for the women’s a few weeks later. That’s not even a fifth of Rory’s haul.
Here, both Scottish Opens are sponsored by Martin Gilbert’s Aberdeen Asset Management Group, with support from the Scottish Government.
The men will have a £3 million prizefund in 2015, rising to £4 million in 2015. The women played for a total of £205,000 in August – just 7% of the men, although AAM are taking steps to address this from next year.
The stated aim of #next10years is to emulate tennis, which along with athletics are the only major sports who pay out equally for both sexes.
This still causes some controversy in tennis, but even the assertion that women in that sport get the same money for best-of-three set matches works favourably for golf; they play four rounds in the women’s majors just like the men.
But do women advocating #next10years really believe they can achieve parity on money in a decade? I doubt it.
I also doubt whether they’ll get parity in media attention, which is very much a chicken-and-egg situation. Women’s golf doesn’t get media coverage to boost its popularity, but it’s difficult to get greater popularity without more media coverage.
Media outlets are in a commercially competitive world. Golf events often clash; the Women’s British Open is usually the same week as the WGC Bridgestone, and in recent times most (not all) of the main UK golf writers have gone to Akron even when Inbee Park was chasing a Grand Slam at St Andrews two years ago.
So is #next10years a hopeless case? Of course not.
You don’t get anywhere without starting, or without making a noise. Even if true equality in 10 years is a pipedream, there’s a simply unacceptable disparity in both money and media between the men’s and women’s games that needs to be even partially addressed right now.
The doors of the R&A came down to women this year, and that’s an indication that anything can be achieved if pressure is maintained.
Women’s golf itself has been acquiescent in disparity for too long. It’s good that they won’t be any longer.
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It was perhaps inevitable that Tiger Woods’ clunky return to action at the weekend would be ludicrously over-analysed.
Having taken the long break that we at T2G had persistently advised, the only thing to concern Woods at his Hero World Challenge knockabout with 17 pals at Isleworth was that he made it through four rounds without wrecking his back again. In that respect, the weekend was a roaring success.
You can read what you like into the much-catalogued nine duffed chips, but I wouldn’t bother too much.
He’s in the process of working on yet another swing change or a part-reversion to Tiger V1.0 from 1996, intriguingly and something’s going to get neglected in the meantime.
In April, after playing himself hopefully healthily into the 2015 season, we can make a proper judgement on where Woods is going forward. Last weekend was just the first of baby steps.
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I can’t let the week pass without a tribute to my friend and colleague Norman Mair, who died at the weekend.
Like many journalists of my age, Norman’s meticulously scripted writings for the Scotsman were an inspiration to get into the business.
Seeing him in action once you got there made you realise he was a true original, impossible to emulate.
There’s never been anyone, in my estimation, able to convey his depth of knowledge of technique in his chosen sports golf and rugby in such a readable and engaging way.
Watching him loiter at the end of a huddle interview for his “afters” questions, or hunched over his “Tandy” – he never quite got to grips with a modern laptop showed his was a craft that required utmost dedication.
It can’t have been easy to be Norman’s sub-editors, I imagine, but he always wanted the very best for his avid readers.
They included a great many he was actually reporting on. He had the ear and respect of major figures like Sir Ian McGeechan, Jim Telfer, Colin Montgomerie, even Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson.
Norman was also among the nicest of men in what can be a cut throat business. Even when semi-retired he would be regularly seen in press tents on the golf circuit on the press deck at Murrayfield, chatting, asking opinions and giving them.
When Norman gave his views, you simply had to listen. Because you knew he would invariably be right.