It’s never too late to do the right thing.
No, not even after 260 years. And if it’s still “if” the R&A admit women members in September continuing to debate how they got there will seem a little pointless.
However, it’s worth correcting a key misconception. Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A and the public face of the club, has been personified as the bulwark that prevented change.
This was however a complete misunderstanding of Dawson’s position. He is not a director of the club, he is a servant of the membership.
He could advise and use words some of us have been writing for 20 years like indefensible, untenable, and all the rest. Yet the members, largely comfortable with the policy and rather defiant when being told what to do, didn’t have to pay any attention.
A clue to what was happening behind the doors of the Big House all these years came in Dawson’s admission last week that the all-male issue was discussed at every strategy meeting of the club hierarchy since he became chief executive in 2000.
It could be that every two years they discussed how to counter the detrimental publicity the membership policy attracted. Just last August I heard a senior R&A official admit privately that, after the nightmare week at Muirfield, “we need a new argument”.
However, this was not a personal approval of the policy but an understanding that getting change through the R&A membership was incredibly difficult.
Because they’d been trying for years.
Dawson is no crusader for equal rights, but he’s a practical man and, while publicly representing the club and stalwartly defending the indefensible all this time, there seems little doubt in private he was chipping away at the edifice.
What changed? Well, they got the new argument they wanted, but it wasn’t for keeping the policy, it was for ending it.
Despite Dawson’s comments, the influence of the Open’s commercial partners WAS key.
Giles Morgan, the head of sponsorship and events for one of the Open’s major backers HSBC, went public in January saying the bank were “uneasy” with the all-male policy.
That’s been taken as the tipping point, but Giles – a canny operator in his days dealing with that other Scottish sporting dinosaur, the SRU was pushing at an open door, maybe with the acquiescence of R&A officialdom.
The R&A had already sounded out the commercial world in the review they had announced at Muirfield, probably knowing here was the lever to finally force change.
The money that pours in from the Open, through TV and commercial partners, is crucial to the R&A. It allows the club to develop and promote golf globally and maintain their role as the guardians of the game. It’s been built over two centuries and unique in any major sport, and means more to the R&A than just about anything.
A choice between the all-male policy and maintenance of that cherished role is a no-brainer, even for the most stubborn R&A member.
*I spent much of last week wondering what Graeme McDowell was trying to apologise for.
G-Mac said on Twitter his comments about Tiger Woods to journalists at Bay Hill were “taken out of context” – which is usually sports-speak for “I said it, but didn’t much like it when I saw it on the printed page”.
Several respected golf journos were present at G-Mac’s press conference, most of whom are not given to sensationalising quotes. G-Mac, as we’ve noted before in T2G, is widely treasured in the press tent for having an opinion, speaking his mind eloquently and never being short of a usuable quote on just about any subject.
So having missed the original story due to being distracted by 6 Nations shenanigans, I had to backtrack.
Here’s what G-Mac said…“He’s lost that sort of force field of invincibility around him.” “The aura is not as strong.” “(When I first played with him) he was playing a different sport than me. But guys get older, stuff happens.”
“(Younger players) are not out there believing he is unbeatable because the positive press that happened for 10 years has been replaced with some negativity,”
“He’s still Tiger Woods, still the greatest player ever in my opinion.”
What could possibly be taken out of context about that?
It turns out that G-Mac’s comments, while eminently accurate to reasonable people, seem to fallen foul of the considerable legion of “Tiger Twitter Trolls”, those who do not countenance any criticism of the man in a public forum.
The only people taking anything out of context are these morons roundly abusing G-Mac for having the temerity to make valid points.
Still, his reaction was a little disappointing. Not everyone can be Ian Poulter, who when abused on twitter relishes giving it back, regularly making trolls look like (intellectual) dwarves.
But I would hope G-Mac would have the courage to fight his corner with idiots rather than just deflect the blame to the media.