Sir, - May I draw attention to what I think is an important element in the debate on equality for women in golf clubs which was missing from the report in your newspaper on April 1st. The report gave the impression that the Irish Ladies Golfing Union (ILGU) and the Golfing Union of Ireland (GUI) are at one in trying to get male-only and male-dominated golf clubs to see the error of their ways in relation to membership for women. They may be at one in some regards, but it is hard to believe that their common purpose is the expeditious achievement of equal status for men and women in golf clubs.
Non-golfers, including the Minister responsible for the Equal Status Bill, and indeed many golfers themselves, might ask how the pursuit of equality can be facilitated by the GUI constitution, which continues to prohibit the affiliation of any golf club with other then male members. The GUI has a stock answer to this question which we may hear if this letter is published. It can be paraphrased like this: if the numerous established golf clubs without female members each abandons its current constitution and reconstitutes itself into three separate clubs, each with its own constitution, there will be no need for the GUI to change. In other words, the GUI would prefer a myriad of clubs to change than to change itself.
If the GUI does indeed support equality for women golfers, as suggested in the newspaper report, but does not believe it is possible to integrate male and female golfers in a single organisation, it might look across the Atlantic to the largest and perhaps most powerful and influential golf administration in the world for guidance. That organisation, namely the United States Golf Association (USGA), which has put enormous resources into researching and developing all aspects of golf, has successfully integrated the sexes to the extent that it elected a woman as its president in 1997. - Yours, etc.,
Geo Smillie
Station Road, Portmarnock, Co Dublin.