Given it is the only notable event Muirfield golf club now stages, I increasingly look forward to its biannual row over whether to admit women members. Last played in May 2016, the contest returns this month, and promises to put observers right inside the action of ye olden tymes as they enjoy breathtaking views uttered in front of a backdrop of breathtaking views. Think of it as a sort of Westworld for golf, shot on a cost of £80m to the local economy, which is what estimations reckon hosting the Open would be worth. I’m not saying the row is comically quaint, but you wouldn’t rule out hearing that during its course, someone or other had furiously cast his periwig to the floor.
A personal highlights reel from last time around would include interventions from Peter Alliss, who appeared to regard the Muirfield facilities as so superlative that they were worth entering into a high-stakes bargain for. “If someone wants to join,” he mused, “well, you’d better get married to someone who’s a member”. I don’t know about you, but I think if I were to enter into a marriage of state, I’d require in return something like dibs on the Hapsburg empire, as opposed to the chance of a silent G&T in the 19th with a man who switches channel when Cialis adverts come on.
Anyway, other standout moments from last May’s failed revolution included a leaked letter from those bitterly opposed to admitting women, who were wetting their collective pants about a number of “the risks” of female membership. Primarily, these appeared to pose the greatest danger to the men’s “lunch arrangements”, which were mentioned not once but twice, and fretfully.
“We are not an ordinary club,” ran one instance of this preoccupation. “Our special nature; ‘a gentleman’s club where golf is played’ is quite unique with its fraternity built inter alia on foursomes play with a round taking only the same time as lunch and leaving enough time for a further round after lunch [even in mid-winter]. This is one of the miracles in modern day play and is much admired.”
If anything, I think “miracles in modern day play” understates it – but we go on. “The risks for the club are that a major change will fundamentally change our way of doing things,” ran another gambit, “and once that process develops it will be impossible to stop.” I love that line, mainly because I’m fascinated by where they imagine the unstoppable process would be headed. Pretty sure it ends in extrajudicial murder on the greens. One minute you’re letting in women members, the next there’s Prius in the car park, and before you know it you’re being led to Madame Guillotine on the 18th by a man who says Zimbabwe instead of Rhodesia. It’s the thin end of the wedge, isn’t it?
In any event, the abolitionists were unable to muster the two-thirds majority required for the motion to admit women members to be carried last year, with those against winning 64 per cent over 36 per cent. Within approximately 12 seconds of the result becoming public, the R&A announced that it was removing Muirfield from the list of Open venues.
So here we are again, with another vote later this month on whether or not to enter the 20th century. I very much enjoyed the recent Sky News report into Muirfield’s latest agonies, which saw various frightful stringbacked bores explain to the cameras that this wasn’t a course for women, that “quite a lot them” don’t want to be members anyway, and that “c’est la vie”.
As for which way the vote will go this time, who can say? Perhaps the modernisers have managed to sway the requisite few of the old guard round to their way of thinking. Perhaps an enterprising reporter will find themselves at the right snug bar exit at the right time, and manage to elicit another targeted intervention by scratch civil rights activist Alliss. Perhaps a new leaked letter will reveal anxiety about what female influence will do to Muirfield’s miraculously idiosyncratic drinks ordering conventions, or make its inevitable journey to the issue of transgender bathrooms. Then again, perhaps one or two members have decided they like golf more than clubs, and consequently would actually quite like the chance to see it played at its highest level in an Open on their home course. The last thing any of them need worry about is the notion that what they do really matters now.
On club membership, I am an unapologetic Marxist (Groucho, not Karl), and since the R&A have rightly removed Muirfield from the Open rota, this spectacle has become much more self-harming than anything else. Indeed, the good gentlemen of Muirfield should be under absolutely no illusion: watching their twice-yearly insistence on making pillocks of themselves is a hundred times more entertaining sport than anything that could be viewed on their course. If they feel they must persist in this particularly savage brand of self-satire, then it is not for us to impede their journey.
(Guardian service)
