Portmarnock’s stance is an insult to every woman in the country

AS Nick Faldo was walking to the last green in the final round of the British Open last Sunday, the crowd were on their feet, giving him a tremendous ovation.

It undoubtedly turned the clock back for him. From the mid-80s to the mid-90s he was at the top of the world of golf. Peter Allis, the BBC commentator, delved into his own memory bank: “I remember almost the last conversation I had with Henry Longhurst and I said to him, ‘Anything you regret?’ And he said, ‘I wish I had been nicer when I was younger’.”

With Faldo centre screen, Allis pointedly added: “I wonder if that ever goes through other people’s minds.” Faldo has had his difficulties with the media over the years. After winning the British Open at Muirfield in 1992 he infamously thanked his “friends” in the media “from heart of my bottom”. It was a calculated insult, and they have obviously not forgotten. One starter at the Irish Open a few years ago recalled mentioning to one world-famous golfer from not a million miles away that the weather looked like it was going to clear. It was only by way of small talk and the golfer just grunted. Moments later the golfer’s caddy came along and asked if every thing was all right. Great, the starter heard the golfer reply, “they’ve even got a f**king weatherman here.”

Golf may be a game for gentlemen, but not all golfers are gentlemen. One fanciful story, often repeated, suggests that the game got its name from the first letters of four words at the entrance to an old club in Scotland: Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden. The story is not true, but people frequently believe it because it seems likely. Growing up in Tralee I often heard it said that all the members of the golf club were not snobs, but all the snobs were in the golf club. For years they refused to carry draught stout in the bar because, presumably, it would attract the wrong sort and there certainly was a strong gender bias in the club. Women were not only barred from full membership, they were not even allowed into the club bar until the late 1950s. If they wished to have a drink they had to go next door and ring a bell and they were served through a hatch. The bar was a sanctuary for a few hen-pecked husbands.

Most of the other men probably understood and sympathised with their need for such a place of sanctuary. There were a few cranky hens that nobody would want in a bar, but rather than confront them, all the women were excluded. You heard of the pub with no beer, well this then was the club with no balls, and there were many like it.

My first real introduction to discrimination was on a golf course during my first term at university in Texas in 1964. I was about to play one day and somebody behind me asked if he could join me. I was going to say yes, when I realised he was black, and black and white people did not play golf together in Texas at the time. In fact, he was the first black person I had seen at the course.

It raced through my mind that I had not come there to stir up trouble but just as quickly I realised that if I said no, I would be a racist. This was a measure of how easy it was to become conditioned to racism in just a few weeks. So I agreed that we should play together. He introduced himself as Zack Hayes; he was a member of the university basketball team. As we were playing the second hole a couple of white students playing another hole made a racist comment to me. Zack realised that they had said something and he asked if it bothered me. It didn’t.

WE played together many times during the next couple of years, but never once did we play without somebody trying to insult one of us. Back in 1978, the World Cup of Golf was due to be played at Waterville in the constituency of the current Minister for Tourism and Sport, John O’Donoghue. It was a great opportunity to promote golf in this country, but the tournament was moved to Hawaii because the government of the time refused to admit a team from South Africa, as that country was persisting with its apartheid policies.

It was one thing for that Fianna Fáil government to lecture South Africa on its responsibilities to its own citizens, but we are again witnessing the monumental hypocrisy of our current Government when it comes to dealing with discrimination in this country. Gender discrimination may now be largely a thing of the past but we still see relics of it. It was Charlie Haughey who introduced the Succession Act, which outlawed the practice whereby a man could leave all his property and wealth to the Church and make no provisions for his wife and children, even though the wife may actually have built up the business. It was assumed that he owned everything, including his children.

She was probably lucky that our great Christian leaders did not think that he had a right to dispose of her also.

Only this week there was a case of an elderly 91-year-old woman suing her son to make proper provision for her. Her husband had died some time BC (Before Charlie) and her son inherited all the property, which he sold off a few years ago for over £19 millions. Now she is in the courts in an attempt to compel him to make what she considers proper provisions for her.

If the members of Portmarnock Golf Club have the right to confine their membership to men only, it exposes a serious flaw in our constitutional set up. Anyone who heard all the arguments in favour of racial discrimination in the 1960s realises that those had no more validity than the arguments for gender discrimination at Portmarnock now.

Women are entitled to full membership in most Irish clubs. There are less than a dozen still holding out. Last year John O’Donoghue suggested that people could challenge the Portmarnock club’s bar licence. Of course, it was too much to expect that this Government would show real leadership and take the action itself.

There are many fine golf links that do not discriminate against women, so the argument that televising the Irish Open on the links at Portmarnock would promote Irish golf and tourism is spurious. Any one of several links courses around the country could just as easily and effectively been used without prostituting the rights of women.

Members of the current Government will stand up for their own rights when it comes to increasing their pay and their perks, but don’t expect them to stand up for anybody else’s rights, much less the rights of more than half the population.

The Government has condoned the gender discrimination by providing public money to support the Irish Open at Portmarnock, while it refuses to permit women members. This is an insult to every woman in the country and anybody else who believes in fair play.