Women to the fore at Muirfield now!
Hosting major championship golf again is a seminal moment for one of Scotland’s most famous clubs... six years after they were cast into the sporting wilderness for slamming the door shut on female members
TAKE a look at this, it’s one of my favourite pieces,’ Robin Dow tells Sportsmail. ‘This is a pocket watch, awarded for the longest drive with a “feathery” ball. Two hundred and 31 yards... in 1790! It’s just fantastic.’
Dow, the former captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and unofficial club historian, is an enthusiastic tour guide to anyone visiting Muirfield’s clubhouse — a veritable living, breathing museum.
He’ll be kept busy in the coming days welcoming guests arriving for the AIG Women’s Open; a landmark event for any golf club, but a seminal moment in the history of this grand East Lothian links.
Nine years ago, Dow handed the Claret Jug as captain to Phil Mickelson, after the American fulfilled his lifelong ambition to win The Open. That sun-kissed week took place against a backdrop of rumblings about the club’s male-only membership policy, which soon boiled over.
A members vote in 2016 to admit female members calamitously failed to pass, leading to widespread condemnation.
The R&A removed Muirfield from the rota to host The Open, and while a second vote soon after redressed the mistake, the damage had been done. Members and staff received abusive messages, children sent letters of complaint and the club was portrayed as a bastion of sexism.
Tomorrow marks the return of major championship golf to Muirfield for the first time since Mickelson’s triumph. Both player and club have faced heavy criticism in the court of public opinion for their erroneous decision-making. Mickelson remains in golf purgatory due to his association with LIV as the reputation of Muirfield has been quietly rebuilt.
Dow led the push for the initial vote, supported by his committee and the club secretary Stuart McEwen, who previously worked at Gleneagles and Kingsbarns. He knows the Women’s Open could be seen as Muirfield’s public reawakening, but scars remain.
‘In 2013, there was an agreement that the R&A were responsible for all PR and external communications; we weren’t talking to the media at all,’ said Dow.
‘After that championship, my sense was to step back and say: “This is a seismic moment, and we can either pretend it didn’t happen, and go back to being incredibly private, living behind the gates, and never see The Open again” or we think about other possibilities. So that’s what we did.
‘We told everyone it was an open vote, but we explained, in some detail, that while we couldn’t guarantee the outcome of a “no vote”, the likeliest scenario would be extreme. It was frustrating afterwards when people came to us and said: “Oh I didn’t realise this was going to happen! If I’d known that…”
‘The damage to the club’s reputation was extraordinary. It was awful. You can only try to do the right thing over a period of time, and progressively change that perception of who you are and what you do.’
An integral part of the club’s desire to prompt change has been the multi-million pound redevelopment of the clubhouse, finished just before the pandemic struck. Many of the priceless artefacts contained here are now properly displayed, such as the 1744 Silver Club, one of the oldest sporting trophies in existence, as well as a copy of the original rules of golf, drawn up by members of the HCEG. Those competing this week have an open invite to soak up the history.
More importantly, the building work included an extension for female locker rooms, impressively in proportion to the rest of the clubhouse. The growing contingent of women joining since 2018 — 18 thus far, with seven more likely to join in the coming months — have positively added to Muirfield’s organisational structure as well as its culture.
One of those, Barbara Biggart, is in charge of organising volunteers for this week’s tournament; she was swamped with offers of help months in advance. The club have signed up to the R&A’s Women in Golf Charter. Within all these pro-active steps, the mantra is clear that there are no separate men’s and women’s membership categories at Muirfield — just members.
‘We have a relatively modest number of female members, who’ve all joined in a short period of time, and more will follow. It’s been a seamless transition, and the new members are great,’ added Dow. ‘I know all of them, and you couldn’t possibly have a better group of people. They feel welcomed, and I think they feel at ease. That’s a compliment to the way it’s been handled.
‘The focus was that women should feel they are on an equal footing with every other member, and that’s the principle that should sustain us in the future.
‘It will be special for the players to see the clubhouse this week, because there’s so much fantastic stuff in here.
‘I don’t really think the world knows much about it — even our members are more interested in the heritage of the club and much prouder to talk about it now.
‘We’re exceptionally privileged to have what we have because they are the most important artefacts in the world of golf.’
The embarrassment of “the vote” still weighs heavily on some here, but Muirfield is now back under consideration on The Open rota, though the tournament will not be staged here until at least 2026 at the earliest.
Yet talk of its return, or of this week being a dress rehearsal for a return, has been rightly shelved. The arrival of the world’s greatest female golfers is a massive feather in the club’s cap in its own right.
‘We’ve had big women’s events: the Scottish Women’s Amateur in 1914, the Curtis Cup twice (1952 and 1984) — but that’s not even remotely on the same scale as this,’ said Dow. ‘For the club to have this here is fantastic. My fervent hope, and the club’s ambition, is that we want this to be the most successful Women’s Open ever. That’s where we’ve set the bar. What happens after is a separate consideration; members have all sorts of views about that.
‘The important thing for us is that we want the Women’s Open to be so successful, why would we not want major championships of whatever kind to come back? The R&A say in their headlines: “We hold The Open at the best links golf courses in Britain” — well, in almost every survey you look at, this comes out as the best in Britain, possibly with the exception of Royal County Down.
‘We are not overtly projecting the idea (of wanting The Open back). We are simply wanting to demonstrate that this will be a fantastic Women’s Open. That chapter then completes itself and closes; what happens afterwards, that will be a separate focus.
‘This week is another step in the club’s contribution to golf. It feels like a very big chapter to me.’
Whoever lifts the trophy here on Sunday will have their name etched into the club’s history. Sometime in the future, there’s likely to be a captain of Muirfield who is female.
Both moments, when they arrive, will resonate loudly as a sign of how much this club has evolved in a short space of time.
The damage to the reputation of our club after the no-vote was extraordinary