Muirfield Moves Forward

Sneak Peek: This article will appear in the July 1 issue of Global Golf Post.

On Monday 1 July, the 12 women who have been invited to join Muirfield, alias The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, officially will take up their position as the club’s first female members in the wake of the 2017 decision to change the club’s rules. Or, to put it another way, 275 years after the founding of the Honourable Company.

None of the women members, two of whom are from overseas, has been identified. That much does not come as a surprise and, in any case, is of rather less import than the fact that Catriona Matthew, the woman who was expected to be among the first of the new arrivals, is not in the chosen 12 and has tweeted as much. Initially, this seeming anomaly was let slip by two long-standing members who were rightly of the opinion that golfing fraternity at large would be asking questions.

Matthew, who will be captaining the European side in this year’s Solheim Cup at Gleneagles in September, was given to believe that she would...