Editor’s note: This story published originally in the June 5, 2023 issue of Global Golf Post.
WALTON-ON-THE-HILL, ENGLAND | The AIG Women’s Open, being played this week at Walton Heath Golf Club, 15 miles south of London, has witnessed a radical transformation in its surprisingly short history.
Though the men’s Open was first played in 1860, it took another 116 years for the women’s version to be inaugurated for professionals. The second winner, Vivien Saunders, actually claimed victory on countback – the better final-round score – a detail so startlingly bizarre that it beggars belief (and also maybe reveals that while professionals competed, amateurism still thrived).
The championship was elevated to major status in 2001, and the R&A assumed organisational duties in 2017. Those two advances have boosted stature and prize money.
Consider that when South Africa’s Ashleigh Buhai clinched victory at Muirfield last year, she won $1,095,000. In contrast, Georgia Hall, the champion as recently as 2018, earned $490,000. The overall prize fund has also more than doubled from $3.25 million five years ago to $7.3 million in 2022.
Nor is it inflation, as dizzying as that is, driving these rises. Instead it is the determination to create financial equality across men’s and women’s sport.
It is a move that Buhai welcomed when speaking to reporters at last week’s media day for this year’s championship.
“It’s a life-changing opportunity, and we’re finally getting the recognition we deserve,” she said. “This is my 16th year as a professional, and the money has changed tremendously in terms of what we are playing for.”
For all the improvements in the majors, however, Buhai is keen to see similar changes filter down the LPGA schedule.
“Ultimately we want to be playing for more money every week,” she said, adding that while the 100th-ranked performer on the 2022 PGA Tour pocketed $1,289,503, the equivalent on the LPGA totalled $167,061.
“Unfortunately, with what it costs to travel these days – flights, caddies, accommodation – you’re just breaking even with that money,” she said. “It’s very stressful from that point of view, and I played like that for many, many years. That’s something people don’t really see, but behind the scenes it is what we have to go through.”
Moreover, Buhai is talking as an LPGA-based competitor. For those on the Ladies European Tour, the money-earning potential is yet more bleak. This year, 12 events on the LET schedule have prize funds of €350,000 (about $375,000) or less. In other words, the break-even point is even more frighteningly close to the top of the rankings (the 100th-ranked performer on the LET in 2022 cashed €35,541).
Perhaps a little revolutionary spirit is necessary. If so, Walton Heath is the ideal location, having a history that is inextricably linked with the Suffragettes (the women’s group which demanded the right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries).
Earlier in 1913, Pinfold Manor, second home of the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, was in the process of being completed in nearby Walton on the Hill. The Suffragettes, angry that Lloyd George championed the Suffragette cause outside Parliament whilst doing precious little for the cause inside it, planted a bomb on the site, exploding it during the night when it was empty.
Just a few miles from the course is the town of Epsom, home of the Derby and scene of Emily Davison’s fatal rush into the pathway of King George V’s horse in the 1913 race. If that remains the most famous protest by the Women’s Social and Political Union, Walton Heath would experience another all of its own.
The club always had been popular with politicians. Earlier in 1913, Pinfold Manor, second home of the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, was in the process of being completed in nearby Walton on the Hill.
The Suffragettes, angry that Lloyd George championed the Suffragette cause outside Parliament whilst doing precious little for the cause inside it, planted a bomb on the site, exploding it during the night when it was empty.
In an era known as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, the facts of the case read remarkably like one of its stories. There were reports of motor cars driving over Walton Hill, suggestions of whispered voices behind the local pub, the bomb was said to include “French nails with powder,” a stray galosh was discovered in a nearby field and, with a wonderful lack of subtlety by the police or stupidity by the bombers, hat pins were discovered next to unused explosives.
Davison initially was among those suspected of responsibility, but the movement’s leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, claimed sole accountability and was jailed for three years in Holloway Prison, although she ultimately served just a few days.
It was the bombing campaign’s only attack on a building with golf connections, but it was very far from being the Suffragettes’ only golf-related activities. Indeed, courses had long been a key battlefield for Emmeline and her daughter, Christabel, as they took on politicians with deeds rather than words.
Damage to greens was a common tactic. Clubs in Richmond, Acton, Raynes Park, West Essex, Cromer, Sheringham and Panteg reported phrases such as “Votes for Women!” and “No surrender!” gouged or sprayed in acid across them.
Prime Minister Herbert Asquith also was seen as fair game, having rounds at Royal Dornoch and Elgin disturbed by protesters demanding the vote.
Emmeline Pankhurst gave a speech in which she refuted notions that she was no fan of the sport. “We are not fighting you because you play golf,” she cried. “We are not fighting you at all, but trying to stir you up. Tell us you sympathise with us. We are determined, even at the price of your sympathy, to stir you up to do something.”
In 1928 the government was finally stirred and gave women the vote.
Nearly a hundred years on, the only bombs involved in women’s golf’s quest for equality will, one trusts, be delivered by drivers from tee boxes. Golf courses may have been a rebel battle ground in the past, but those who play the game always have been, and likely always will be, conservatives who favour evolution over revolution.
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