Muirfield's Membership: Savage Brand Of Self-Satire?

The Honourable Company will be voting again later this month to potentially admit female members and The Guardian's Marina Hyde has moved beyond the bothered stage, having shifted to enjoyment of the club's stubborn ways. (Thanks to reader TM for sending.)

A majority of members have voted in favor of allowing females to join. But as Hyde recounts, the holdouts, who have prevented the move from occurring and Muirfield to rejoin the Open rota, are viewed...lightly.

On club membership, I am an unapologetic Marxist (Groucho, not Karl), and since the R&A have rightly removed Muirfield from the Open rota, this spectacle has become much more self-harming than anything else. Indeed, the good gentlemen of Muirfield should be under absolutely no illusion: watching their twice-yearly insistence on making pillocks of themselves is a hundred times more entertaining sport than anything that could be viewed on their course. If they feel they must persist in this particularly savage brand of self-satire, then it is not for us to impede their journey.

Comments

[Belowpar]

Surprisingly pretty for The Grauniad, the Committee must have been at a holistic management retreat the week she was hired.

Typically the comments seem to think it's some masterpiece of satire.




If the vote doesn't go Yes this time I expect the Club to batten down the hatches and go on with being a fine members club. But in another generation or so, the younger memebrs will wantt to be seen again at the top table. Why postpone the inevitable?

[D. maculata]

The backward thinking of the membership majority can't be argued. But it is within their purview to do so. What Ms Hyde fails to understand, as all reformers do, is the concept of forcing people to do something without compromise whether it's good for them or not. On this side of the pond we've just come off 8-years of that. The result was clear and colored orange.

[Tom Morris]

No Women, yet these so called would be golfers would not hesitate to use distance aids or carts/buggies to play golf.
Their hypocrisy astounds me, by banning women while demeaning the very game their club is founded upon.
The classic example of male snobbery or better defined as rebels without a just cause.
What ho! chaps.

Sad really, as it’s one of my favourite clubs.

[Tim Aggett]

Every Club has the right to determine its own membership and rules. Every Club has the right to make itself look exceptionally silly. Muirfiled continues to do both. If they would rather keep their misoginistic exclusivity and not have the Open why exactly should the rest of us care. It's up to them after all.

As a true rarity the R and A have done the necessary. Ms Hyde has it spot on. It is sooo much fun watching ageing fools defend the indefensible

[Press Agent]

@Belowpar;

Yes, the attractiveness of a journalist is always very relevant to the story. Do you also consider the attractiveness of the male journalists in your daily news consumption? Your alias is spot on.

[The Old Man]

Muirfield, don't change a thing. #FTB

[mitch]

Muirfield Members, Hold that line! Change nothing. Don't cave like Royal Troon and the Royal & Ancient, which blew it. R&A should have merged with their Ladies Golf Union years ago. Club membership would then have been a non-issue.

[KS]

Geoff -- how much money do the clubs who host The Open make for the event? I have to think that's part of their calculus. If that answer were zero, I suspect they would be taking the road of Butler National or Cypress Point.

[Belowpar]

Are yoiu really a Press Agent?
All members of Muirfield are ugly old misogynists

All Guardian Journalists are ugly old men haters.


Now read my second sentence. I credit the rest of the readers of this blog have worked this out for themselves.


Have a nice day and don’t bother your pretty little head at all about how much declining intelligence standards have undermined the 4th Estate, sending it into tailspin.