While many consider golf to be a sport that is dominated by men, the fact is not completely true. Women, since the times golf came into existence, have been very enthusiastic about golf, in fact, more than men. It is true that like many other sports, golf has also been discriminative towards for a long time, but that did not stop the women from playing golf. In fact, women were seen taking more interest in the game of golf than men.
Initially, women used to indulge in the game of golf every secretively. Men thought that women were unfit to play golf because women were considered to be physically weak and unable. Since the time golf evolved as a sport, women had to fight for their right to play.
In fact, women were not even allowed to watch most of the golf tournaments, during which, women used to hide and enter through the backdoor. The situation remained so in most of the prestigious clubs of the world even till the late twentieth century.

Queen Mary of Scots: First-Ever Recorded Woman Golfer

Queen Mary of Scots was the first ever woman recorded to take a swing. Queen Mary of Scots ruled Scotland from 1542 to 1567, and she used to play in the 1560s. She was a sports enthusiast, and is believed to be the first woman documented playing golf. It was during her reign that the very famous St. Andrew’s Links Golf Course was built.
It was with Queen Mary of Scots that the trend of playing golf by women started. Incidentally, she is credited with introducing the term “Caddie”. The term “caddie” is derived from the French word “cadet” meaning student or assistant, and the Queen introduced this term to denote her helpers during the game of golf.
After 200 years of the death of Queen Mary of Scots, it is in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that golf for women started to be normalized because till this point in time, men felt that women are supposed to play golf for fun, and there shouldn’t be any competitive spirit among them. Scottish judge Lord Moncrieff said that women should not be allowed to drive the ball further than 70 or 80 yards as “the posture and gestures required for a full swing are not particularly graceful when the player is clad in female dress”.

Ladies’ Golf Club at St. Andrews in the 19th Century

Still, the first recorded proper golf tournament for women happened in 1811 at Musselburgh, Scotland. The Ladies’ Golf Club at St. Andrews was founded in the 1867, which happened to be the first all-woman golf club in the world. In 1891, Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York, became the first golf club to offer membership to women, and four years later, in 1895, the U.S Golf Association organized the first Women’s Amateur Championship tournament.
The contributions of the eighteenth and nineteenth century women in the game of golf has been immense. To state a few would be as follows:
a. Issette Miller invented the first fold handicapping system. The introduction of this system not only made the game and competition more inclusive in terms of gender, but also allowed less experienced golfers to level the playing field.
b. Golf became an Olympic sport in 1900, and Margaret Abbott became the first woman to win an Olympic event.
c. Helen Hicks became the first woman to receive acclamation worldwide as first professional woman golfer, who won the Women’s Western Open 1937 and Titleholders’ Championship 1940.
d. In 1944, the Women’s Professional Golf Association (WPGA) came into being, chartered by three prominent female golfers, Hope Seignious, Betty Hicks, and Ellen Griffin. Though female golfers rose to fame with this organization, the WPGA was shut down within five years of its foundation due to financial struggles.
e. The shutting down of the WPGA led to the formation of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in the year 1950 in the hands of 10 headstrong women, including the three former founders of WPGA.

Committee of the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club

Meanwhile, India was also not leading behind in golf. The first Calcutta Ladies Golf Club, a 9-hole golf course, was started by Lady Curzon and Lady Frazer in 1891, May 7. This unique golf course, first of its kind in India, was managed and run by British ladies residing in Bengal, as well as local women belonging to rich princely families of West Bengal. These women formed a committee and raised an amount of three thousand rupees, equivalent to 35 British pounds in the contemporary time, and set up a tented space as they could not build a permanent structure at Kolkata’s Maidan. In fact, the Walker Cup was introduced in the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club in 1905.
Some of the leading ladies of Indian golf are as follows:
a. Meera Phookan: Phookan is famous for breaking all norms with grace and elegance. She played 18-holes of golf wearing saree along with her contemporaries like Mrs. Jamuna Chakraborty, Mrs. Romola Sen, Mrs. Sam Weller and Mrs. Jean Beven in the rough and tough Digboi Golf Club.
b. Anjana Desai: Anjana Desai won the All India Ladies Amateur Golf Championship hosted by the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club in 1970. She happened to be the first winner of this significant title.
c. Sita Rawlley: Rawlley won the All India Ladies Amateur Golf Championship as an amateur golfer for three consecutive years between 1976 and 1978. Her achievements led her to win the most prestigious sports award of India, the Arjuna Award in 1977.
Times have changed. Women are dominating the game of golf all over the world. Once, the secretary of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club denied the entry of women in the golf club saying, “No woman ever has entered the clubhouse and, praise God, no woman ever will”. But now, women are acing the game, not only with the perspective of playing and winning tournaments of great repute, but to also reach out to potential business networks.
From a great deal of struggle to play golf, to a professional and recreational dominance, women golfers have come a long way. Their journey is of perseverance and hard work. Women golfers all over the world are taking the game to a different level with each passing tournament, and are continuing to inspire the future generations of golfers.