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Royal & Ancient Votes to admit female members

• fatdan 3,379 Posts

  Fri, Sep 19 2014 10:36 PM

  The peculiar timing leads me to believe it is possible someone was trying to get the female votes...

• SweetiePie 4,925 Posts

  Sat, Sep 20 2014 12:41 AM

  I may need some clarity with an example. I remember my Dad speaking of a club, or membership, something like that, that would have a convention or perhaps a get together and it is the Bill Smith Club. Every member has that common name; Bill Smith. And so why would they embrace someone named Agnes Swartz to become a member ? And why is Agnes pestering them and driving them to the bottle with threats of litigation ?

• WigerToods2010 8,445 Posts

  Sat, Sep 20 2014 3:16 AM

  $$$'s folks. That's the only reason for any change IMO.

  Sponsors are wary of associating themselves with anything in today's pc world that could be perceived as being discriminatory on any grounds.

  Here in Scotland the then (chortle....chortle) First Minister Alex Salmond made it known he wouldn't be attending last years Open Championship at Muirfield for that very reason. This had a knock on effect of several sponsors voicing their own concerns on the subject too.

• alosso 21,043 Posts

  Sat, Sep 20 2014 3:30 AM

  SweetiePie:

  I may need some clarity with an example.

  I assume that your example points towards the gentlemen from Augusta. I didn't include them in my previous post because their cause is different to the R&A. Their treat may be that top positions which traditionally are the source of their membership are now no longer exclusively male. Thus they have to open up just to embrace the whole country's elite, if they wish so.

  Apart from that, there are a lot of perfectly justified examples to exclude a part of the population, starting with soccer clubs which do not need to embrace chess players. Other, more relevant examples cover nationality, language, education, gender, religion etc.