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TEE TO GREEN, STEVE SCOTT: A Women’s Masters could free the female game from the sportswashers and do a whole lot more

Tsubasa Kajitani of Japan was the winner of the Augusta National Women's Amateur Tournament in 2021.
Tsubasa Kajitani of Japan was the winner of the Augusta National Women's Amateur Tournament in 2021.

This week the best women players in the world are at the Aramco Saudi Women’s International presented by the Public Investment Fund. Yes, them again.

Before you roll your eyes and turn the page or swipe on, this isn’t going to be another batter at the Saudis, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, the SGL and all that. Well, not entirely.

The women going to Saudi Arabia and the attempted takeover of the men’s game are related, but only distantly.

Ideally, I’d prefer golf, F1 and other sports didn’t ever entertain human rights abusers like the Saudis, or China, or Russia. Or accept investment from them or their enablers like Roman Abramovich and Amanda Staveley.

The complexities of modern sports politics are not clearcut

 

I’m not entirely comfortable with some other prominent places golf goes. But that’s just one person’s view. I am not so naive to believe that the complexities of modern sports politics should be as clearcut.

The women in Saudi is a good example. This event at Royal Greens (same venue as for the men’s event) is not officially sanctioned by the LPGA, but is on the Ladies European Tour’s schedule.

Aramco, the main title sponsor, is the Saudi regime’s oil business, basically. They sponsor this and a larger series of events on both the women’s circuits.

It’s still sportswashing, and you could argue even of a more blatantly hypocritical hue. The treatment of women in Saudi culture is still abhorrent. Things have marginally improved – as Norman recently pointed out they can now actually drive cars or go to restaurants without their male “guardians”.

But the reason the women’s game takes the cash on offer from Aramco is because it has little choice.

The men’s game is awash with money – it really doesn’t need the Saudi millions despite what Mickelson claims.

But without this money, the LET would be struggling to have a schedule at all. Simply put, the women’s game is vulnerable to sportswashing of appalling regimes because it doesn’t get nearly enough backing from us.

The USGA and R&A have stepped up

Things are getting better in some regards. The USGA recently ploughed massive prizefund increases into the US Women’s Open. The R&A did the same with the AIG Women’s Open.

While the pay gap between the men’s and women’s versions of these championships remains – and is unlikely to ever be wholly closed – at least there’s a will from the governing bodies to try to significantly narrow it.

But it needs to get better. We need to get more companies like AIG or ProMedica investing in the women’s game. But we also need a significant gesture from one of our game’s existing shibboleths to match that of the R&A and USGA.

At the end of this month, just before the men’s tournament is played, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur will be played for the third time.

Scotland’s Louise Duncan and Hannah Darling, two outstanding young players set to have great careers in the game, are competing. They and we are rightly delighted that’s happening.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s progress that the Augusta National Golf Club now actually acknowledges women’s golf. But the reaction to this one event is somewhat typical to the doe-eyed and obsequious reaction to everything that ANGC does.

Reading some of the eulogies of past years, you’d think we should all be genuflecting at the green jackets for their hospitality to half of the population. The half they roundly ignored for the first 60 years of their existence.

Is this really all ANGC can do?

Sure, that was then and this is now, and the R&A did it for 250 years. But Augusta starts a tournament in which JUST ONE ROUND out of three is played on their course, and they get a completely free pass?

Players invited to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur will get a practice round on Bobby Jones and Alister Mackenzie’s masterpiece. But they have to make the cut to get the chance to play it competitively on the final day.

I’m not entirely opposed to tokenism if it starts some momentum. But this is actually pathetic.

What Augusta needs to do – immediately – is have their Women’s Amateur tournament entirely played on their precious property. Even better, they really need to start a Women’s Masters.

It would be invitational, like the men’s, so they can keep the field to 60 or 70 if they want. Augusta has various agronomic issues about when it can be played during the calendar year. But they managed to get it running reasonably in November during the pandemic.

There is literally nothing else but members’ play apart from one week in April.

Furthermore, as the only annual major championship host, Augusta is best prepared for the infrastructure necessities. Sensitively hidden behind the avenues of trees, there are hospitality pavilions and spectator facilities like no other venue.

The biggest event in women’s sport, overnight

Ernie Els once said that Carnoustie was the only golf course in the world where you could rock up the weekend before and start a major the following Thursday. He meant in terms of consistency of the course’s condition.

Apart from when the extreme Georgia summers kill the grass or they’re not fiddling with it (which they seem to have been all this winter) the same is true of Augusta, and in infrastructure respects.

Other than the will among the Green Jackets, I can’t see there’s any good reason why we don’t have a Women’s Masters. Overnight it would be the biggest event in the women’s game, quite probably in all of women’s sport.

It would drive attention and sponsors. It would ‘grow the game’ more easily and instantaneously than any single thing one can imagine.

And also, it would eventually mean that the women didn’t have to go cap-in-hand to the sportswashers. That would be something to be truly grateful to the Green Jackets for.