How the return of golf chips away at the Olympic ideal

Margaret Abbott was just 22 when she travelled from Chicago to Paris in 1899 along with her mother, literary editor and novelist Mary Perkins Ives Abbott.

She was making the trip to study art but ended up making history.

Whilst there, the 5’11” socialite won a golf tournament. It consisted of just nine holes and 10 competitors and, somehow, a round of 47 proved good enough to secure first place. She managed it, she told relatives later: “Because all the French girls apparently misunderstood the nature of the game scheduled for the day and turned up to play in high heels and tight skirts.” Her mother, incidentally, finished seventh.