Peter Dawson — Statements re: Men-only golf clubs

Single-sex clubs are in a very small minority in the UK. Half of them are women only, half of them are men only. They’re perfectly legal. In our view they don’t do anyone any harm. And we think the right of freedom of association is important. You can dress it up to be a lot more, if you want, but on the Saturday morning when the guy gets up or the lady gets up and out of the marital bed, if you like, and goes off and plays golf with his chums and comes back in the afternoon, that’s not, on any kind of par with racial discrimination or anti-Semitism or any of these things. Its just what people ‘kind of do. When things are a bit quieter, after the championship, I’m quite sure we’ll be taking a look at everything to see what kind of sense we can make of it for the future. Obviously the whole issue of gender and single-sex clubs has been pretty much beaten to death recently. And we do, I assure you, understand that this is a divisive issue. It’s a subject that we’re finding increasingly difficult, to be honest. We do believe that membership policy is a matter of the club’s. There’s a massive difference between racial discrimination, anti-Semitism, where sectors of society are downtrodden and treated very, very badly indeed, and to compare that with a men’s golf club I think is frankly absurd.