A MEN-only golf club is to hold a special general meeting (SGM) on whether or not to allow women to join its ranks.
Glasgow Golf Club – which claims to be the ninth oldest in the world – is one of few single-sex clubs in the country after Royal Aberdeen agreed to end its bar on women last month.
According to documents seen by The National, the club – which operates the Killermont course at Bearsden and Gailes Links in Irvine – will hold an SGM on the issue this month. The results of a membership consultation were gathered in February and yesterday general manager Chris Spencer said a “reasonable response” had been received, with a result expected “at some point this year”. He said: “Any single-sex club has been in a position where they have to consider whether to open up their membership.
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“It’s quite a significant change for this golf club. It was founded in 1787 and this is probably the biggest decision they’ll have had to make.
“It’s something that can’t be rushed. The information we give the members has to be fair and balanced and it will be down to the members to decide. At the end of the day, it’s their club.”
According to the club’s own paperwork, the cost of the change “is likely to be at least £250,000”, taking in “investment in locker/changing/shower facilities”. However, the spouses of “gentlemen” members are already permitted to play a round as guests and a club source – who wants to remain anonymous – questioned the “uncosted” figure, adding: “They have also managed to produce a document on the topic without once mentioning the words ‘social equality’ or the possibility that, in an era of falling membership, opening it up to the other 50 per cent of the population might be seen as both progressive and to make good commercial sense.”
Gailes Links has hosted the final qualifying rounds for the Open Championship for the past four years, but golf body R&A barred Edinburgh club Muirfield from staging the tournament when it rejected a move to allow women entry in 2016. That decision was overturned after Muirfield reached a different verdict in a second ballot.
On Glasgow Golf Club, The National’s source said a refusal to allow woman would cause “huge embarrassment”.
On the timing, they added that it is “ironic that this should be happening 100 years after women managed to get the vote”.
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