No skirting the issue for women

Historians have made Mary Queen of Scots something of a heroine or role-model for early women golfers. But she wasn't the only royal of that era to be bitten by the golfing bug, as can be gleaned from a letter written by Queen Katherine to Cardinal Wolsey in 1513, when Henry VIII was preoccupied by the little matter of invading France.

The letter read: "Master Almoner, from hence I have nothing to write to you but that you be not so busy in this war as we be here incumbered with it. I mean that touching my own concerns, for going further, when I shall not so often hear from the King, and all his subjects be very glad.

"I thank God to be busy with the golf, for they take it for pastime; my heart is very good to it, and I am horribly busy making standards, banners and bagets." And not a mention of equal status nor the problem of getting a game at weekends!

At this stage, it may be appropriate to refer to the writings, four centuries later, of Joyce Wethered and her ideas on the game as played by the fair sex. "I am not talking about `ladies' golf'," insisted the player who is widely acknowledged as the greatest of all women exponents of the game, "because, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as ladies' golf at all - only good or bad golf as played by members of either sex."

An interesting view, I think you'll agree. Either way, the first women's golf clubs emerged during the latter half of the 19th century. It was a time when genteel ladies of leisure played what could be described as no more than a slightly elongated form of pitch and putt. This stemmed from the fact that it was considered indelicate for women to raise the club above shoulder height. And there was also the seriously inhibiting nature of their clothing.

Gradually, however, women players began to take the game a lot more seriously. This was especially true of the US where, in the classic spirit of the pioneer, members of the newly-formed club at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, in 1893, were persuaded by their wives to build them a separate nine-hole course. And a year later, a group of women founded their own club at Morristown, New Jersey, with a seven-hole course.

Nor were the Irish women left lagging behind. Indeed, we are informed that on an autumn day in 1887, a certain Miss C E McGee travelled to the Kinnegar, Holywood, Co down, on an intriguing mission.

The trip was made at the invitation of a Dr Collier, who was convinced she would be more than a little interested in the sight of a very rare species - a woman golfer! In a letter to her friend Leah Garratt 26 years later, Miss McGee wrote that the woman golfer she had been introduced to, "inspired me with a wish to play the game."

The golfer in question was the wife of a Captain Wright of the Scottish Light Infantry. And their meeting at the Kinnegar would become a key element in the founding of the Irish Ladies' Golf Union in 1893. Of more immediate effect was that Miss McGee's enjoyment of golf led her to discuss with a fellow enthusiast, the possibility of forming a women's club.

This resulted in the inaugural meeting of the Holywood Ladies Golf Club in 1888. So, the letter to Leah Garrett, was in fact written in 1913, the silver jubilee of the club. And from the lead of the Holywood women, clubs soon sprang up at Killymoon, Newcastle, Portrush, Dungannon and Belmont.

On May 14th 1891, the Belfast Newsletter reported: "Yesterday, the first competition for the Killymoon golf club's Ladies Scratch Medal took place, open to all Ireland. . .

(there were) 12 entries from Dungannon, Aughnacloy and Killymoon. . . " This is believed to have been the first women's golf competition ever played in this country.

But not all women responded immediately to the call. So it was that in August 1905, the same newspaper presented evidence of the emergence of a new class known as golf widows and how one of them reacted to her plight. It came in this poem: "I am a widow, though a wife, My husband's lost to me; I seldom see his face at all He's joined the BGC, His talk is all of drives and putts, Of holing out in four, Of bunkers, hazards, mashie shots, And what he calls his score. His purse grows leaner every day, His golf bag fuller grows; How many balls he's bought He never will disclose. I'll join the club myself; and play When he is out to work; Dusting and darning, cookery And washing day I'll shirk. I'll be home at dinner time And in my usual seat, And feed my truant husband well On excellent, tinned meat."

Meanwhile, it is clear that from an early stage, quite a number of men, mostly in the ascendancy class, did not take kindly to having women anywhere near the golf course, much less involved in the game. Indeed an eminent Scottish judge, Lord Montcreiff, observed in 1890:

"It is to their (women's) presence as spectators that the most serious objection must be taken. If they could abstain from talking while you are playing, and if the shadow of their dresses would not flicker on the putting green while you are holing out, other objections might perhaps, be waived!"

As we have indicated, women had to overcome the strictures imposed by their own garments, quite apart from widespread, male prejudice. One such victim of the time, informs us that "every self-respecting woman or girl had to have a waist and the more wasp-like it was, the more one was admired. This was a terrible drawback at golf or tennis, but for a time it had to be endured. The skirts had stiff petersham belts too, which were uncomfortable, and we sometimes wore two petticoats, which came down nearly to the bottom of the skirt and made it all very heavy and cumbrous."

The 19th century observer went on: "In the winter, we had our skirts bound with leather, so that the mud we collected could easily be sponged off; but oh! The weight of the petticoats, the skirt with its collection of mud and the unhealthiness of the whole thing! When I think back on it all, I do marvel that we ever got round a course, even a little nine-hole henrun."

Despite these problems, however, the women's game prospered. And Ireland can claim to have played a major role in its development, not least through the establishment of the ILGU, which is the oldest national women's golf union in the world.