Sexism issue rooted in golf’s fabric
OPINION: A stubborn fallacy persists that golf’s sexism problem is generational.
If only it were so. For if one needed any illustration that the sport’s problematic attitudes to women are far more rooted in the present, it arrived this week in a Sports Illustrated survey titled ‘The Most Beautiful Women in Golf, 2017’.
Even from a publication that has derived a sizeable slice of its fame from a swimsuit calendar, the idea was quite astoundingly tone-deaf. How best, for example, to illustrate the career of Australian Melissa Jones? What about trussing her up in a barely-there feather dress, pulled apart to show off a white bikini? Actually, the more apposite question might be: who on Earth is Melissa Jones?
The explanation is that she has nothing to do with golf whatsoever, save for her marriage to Matt Jones, whose career high-water mark to date is winning the Houston Open three years ago. Still, she apparently merits a lavish, sultry photo-shoot on the strength of her status as a former Miss Idaho, no less. There could be few more fitting expressions of how golf, in a country where the President-elect’s last mission to Moscow came as host of the Miss Universe pageant, has fallen dismally into line with the Donald Trump era.
Study this parade of the dubiously-defined ‘most beautiful’ further, and the results grow stranger still. There appears no earthly reason why Ben Crenshaw’s wife, Julie, or their daughters Katherine, Claire and Anna-Riley are featured in full winsome soft focus, other than the stunning fact that the two-time Masters champion has a ‘‘family full of women’’. Holly Sonders, likewise, has no distinction within golf besides presenting for Fox Sports. And yet SI sees fit to photograph her sprawled across a sofa in a setting of such opulent excess you would think she was Marilyn Monroe.
The crassness is overwhelming. In football, Sepp Blatter was all but flayed alive, with some justification, for suggesting that women’s matches could be more enticing if the protagonists deigned to wear tighter shorts. Golf, however, makes a veritable industry out of this casual objectifying. Just look at the recent output of Golf Digest to see how. This is the most widely read magazine of its type in the US, which sends almost its entire editorial operation to cover the Masters each year.
In May, 2014, it decided that, all things being equal, it was high time to find a female cover star. There was an eclectic array of contenders: teenage phenomenon Lydia Ko was on the rise, while Lexi Thompson had just electrified audiences in America by becoming the second youngest women’s major champion in history. Instead, the brains trust in residence alighted upon the figure of Paulina Gretzky, whose towering contribution to this great game was that she happened to be the fiance of Dustin Johnson. Plus, she was glamorous – and amenable to the idea of seductively bending over her club in a sports bra.
The specious flannelling that Jerry Tarde, the editor-in-chief, used to justify this selection was priceless. ‘‘Paulina ranks at the high end of the golf celebrity scene today,’’ he argued. ‘‘She has a compelling story to tell.’’ Seriously, Jerry? A compelling story? Women are treated less on an even footing than as frivolous novelty items, with little more substance ascribed to them than extras in America’s Next Top Model. The latest, fatuous SI catwalk demonstrates as much, with entrants decided less by sporting accomplishment than by how comely they look when spread-eagled over the furniture at a five-star Florida hotel.
For years, the blame for such inequities has been laid at the door of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, or whichever band of fusty progress-deniers would rather their women stayed away from their clubhouse and rustled them up a restorative brandy after 18 holes of toil. The reality, though, is that antediluvian sentiments are deeply woven into golf’s modern fabric. Telegraph, London