British Open Golf Ends 145 Years of Male Domination

Michelle Wie will have the chance to become the first woman to play in golf's British Open next year after the tournament organizer ended a 145-year-old stipulation that entrants have to be male.
Players including world No. 1 Annika Sorenstam and 16-year- old Wie will be clear to qualify for the 135th edition of the world's oldest golf tournament. The Royal & Ancient Golf Club, which governs the sport outside the U.S., Canada and Mexico, will accept entries from the top five finishers and those tied for fifth place in the four women's major tournaments.
``I am delighted that a qualification route has now been established for the best women players to gain access to the championship, competing alongside men on the same courses and from the same tees,'' R&A Chief Executive Peter Dawson said in a statement today.
The new rule represents a turnabout for Dawson, who said in a January 2004 interview that the Open would be unlikely ever to admit women. Last year, the St. Andrews, Scotland-based organization softened its male-dominated hierarchy by admitting women onto an executive committee that sets changes to golf equipment and the game's laws.
Sweden's Sorenstam became the first woman since Babe Zaharias in 1945 to play in a men's PGA Tour event when she gained a sponsor's invitation to the 2003 Colonial tournament. Wie missed the 36-hole cut in her first men's event, the 2004 Sony Open, by one shot and has failed to reach the final two rounds in three PGA Tour championships.
Wie's Debut
Wie will tee off later today for the first time as a professional in the women's World Championship at Bighorn Golf Club, Palm Desert, California. Wie, whose lone national victory was at the 2003 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links, has said her goal is to play in the Masters Tournament and to be a regular on the men's Tour.
Even with the men-only rule still in place, the Hawaiian schoolgirl would have been allowed to play in this year's Open at St. Andrews had she won July's John Deere Classic on the men's tour or finished as the leading player not otherwise exempt from qualifying for the Open. Wie, who got a sponsor's invite to the John Deere, missed the cut by two strokes.
``I'd love to play in both British Opens,'' Wie told reporters Oct. 11. ``That would be awesome.''
Today's policy change may increase pressure on three of the nine clubs that stage the British Open -- Royal Troon, Royal St. George's and Muirfield -- to end their ban on women members. U.K. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell in March 2003 wrote to Dawson urging him to stop staging the tournament at men-only venues.
Dearth of Women
The game has struggled to get women to take up golf, and then continue playing it. Only 7 percent of golfers in England are females, according to Dallas-based Golf Research Group, which says most beginners give up within a year.
``There's still a death by 1,000 insults on the course,'' Golf Research's Colin Hegarty said in an interview. ``It's there as a background hum, this feeling that the men don't really want them there. Getting rid of bigotry is a slow process.''
Two-time British Open champion Greg Norman in February 2004 dismissed women's inclusion in men's events as a ``marketing ploy,'' while world No. 2 Vijay Singh withdrew from the Colonial in 2003 saying Sorenstam didn't ``belong out here'' shortly before the Swede became the first woman in 58 years to play in a top-level men's event. She missed the cut by four strokes.