Ladies vote to cancel Inter-club events

IRELAND’S female golfers have voted overwhelmingly to cancel all inter-club events for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was announced on Friday last.

Following a high level of correspondence and communication from club golfers and golf clubs on the issue of inter-club golf this year, the ILGU Tournament Committee put together a survey to gauge the interest in running inter-club competition for the remainder of 2020 while adhering strictly to public health measures to ensure the safety of all involved.

However, the vast majority of ladies have given the idea the thumbs down.

The ILGU believed that running these events may have been possible by amending the conditions under which the competitions are usually played and taking into account various factors including availability of courses, health guidelines, reduced time-frame, etc, and these proposals were put to the clubs in the survey.

The plan was that play would get underway as soon as travel restrictions were lifted on July 20 with a strict two-week window between rounds, and that mid-week play would have to be introduced also, but this was not acceptable to the majority of those who returned the survey.

The following was the result of the votes cast for each event and they are comprehensive in their feelings about events going ahead:

Senior Cup: 66% in favour of cancellation

Junior Cup: 73% cancellation

AIG Intermediate Cup: 73% in favour of cancellation

AIG Minor Cup: 77% in favour of cancellation

AIG Challenge Cup: 78% favour of cancellation

Speaking after the result of the ballots were announced, Sandra Barnett, ILGU Tournament Manager, said: “We are obviously in favour of in disappointed that we have had to cancel the inter-club competition for 2020 but we extend a huge thank you to our sponsors and clubs who were scheduled to host matches this year. Their support is acknowledged, and we look forward to resuming inter club golf in 2021.”

Along with the Cups and Shields, the Revive Active Fourball, the Girls’ Inter-club events, the ILGU Silver and Bronze Medals, and the ILGU Junior Medal will also be cancelled for 2020.

Will the men follow suit? A survey from the GUI is currently with the clubs, and proposals such as playing the Jimmy Bruen and

Pierce Purcell Shields as fourballs for this year only instead of foursomes have been put forward, so it will be interesting to see the results when they come back.

Last week, I outlined what I see as the problems facing the GUI if these events were to go ahead, and I would hope that for the sake of the events, they are not changed or compromised just so that they can happen.

That’s just my opinion, and from talking to several people about this in the past week or so, I get the impression that golfers are simply craving a bit of competition, so I would expect that the GUI events may well go ahead.