With as much speed as it was summarily removed last May, Muirfield returned to the Open Championship rota of venues as the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers at last voted to admit women members.
The current captain of the sport’s oldest established club, Henry Fairweather, announced that the membership had voted 80 per cent to 20 per cent in favour of admitting women, comfortably passing the two-thirds majority required under the club rules.
As many as 92 per cent of the club’s 630-strong membership voted in the process over the last four weeks. Last May a first ballot on the proposal to admit women fell just short of the two-thirds threshold, resulting in the R&A removing Muirfield – a host of the Open 18 times – from the rota of championship venues.
-
“Never too late to make the right decision” — read Steve Scott’s analysis in Wednesday’s Courier
Within 15 minutes of Mr Fairweather’s announcement of the second ballot result, the R&A reversed their decision.
“In light of today’s decision by the Honourable Company we can confirm that Muirfield will become a venue for The Open once again,” said R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers.
“It is extremely important for us in staging one of the world’s great sporting events that women can become members at all of our host clubs. Muirfield is a truly outstanding Open venue and we very much look forward to taking the Championship back there in future.”
While the Open being taken from one of its primary venues was unquestionably the chief reason behind the club’ change of mind – only 15 members had to change their vote to get a different result to last May, and many more did – Fairweather said it was not the only one.
“We have 600 plus members, all of whom are people of independent spirit and mind, and I would be reluctant to generalise about what has influenced their decisions,” he said. “To some of them, yes, the Open is a very important event and part of history so that may have influenced them.
“But as far as the committee has been concerned, our main concern has been to make a decision that we felt was the right direction for the long-term future of the club.”
Fairweather said that the club had felt no external pressure during the process although he did make reference to East Lothian Council’s pleasure at the change of mind, with reference to the estimated £70 million economic benefit that can result from an Open Championship to the local area.
But there will be no fast-tracking of women members at Muirfield as the R&A undertook after they admitted women for the first time in 2014, said Fairweather.
“We feel it is important that women are treated in the same way as men and therefore they will require to complete the club’s established process to attain membership,” he said.
That process can take over two years but the captain said he did expect women to be members of the historic club by the time the Open returned, probably in 2022 or 2023.
