Golf club doesn’t ban women... it limits membership to men

GROUCHO MARX once famously said he didn’t want to be part of a club that would accept him as a member, but had he been a woman in Portmarnock the smile might have been on the other side of his face.

In Portmarnock Golf Club’s rule book there “ain’t no such thing as a sanity clause” but there may be a discriminatory sand trap. The club argues its charter does not exclude women but membership is limited to men.

The question of private golf clubs and discrimination is enough to test the mettle of most legal experts, but when you throw gay rugby clubs into the mix, well, the legal conundrum falls far short of a birdie.