David Leggat: Time one sex only clubs changed their ways

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Someone's clearly dropped something in Peter Dawson's porridge. Things move slowly in Scotland.

It's taken a few hundred years to get around to figuring a referendum on becoming independent from the United Kingdom might be a good idea, and what chance it was that a few hours before the most important day in Scottish history another vote should right an historic wrong in the country that invented golf.

After 260 years of men-only membership, the Royal & Ancient club of St Andrews -- home of the governing body of the game outside the United States and Mexico -- decided it was time to open its doors to women.

Peter Dawson, the club secretary, had urged the 2400 male members to "do what's right for golf", ahead of the vote. About 85 per cent voted in favour of change.

Funny thing, though. This was the same Peter Dawson who sang a slightly different tune a year ago.

There was trouble, as the advocates of the status quo doubtless called it, a year earlier when Muirfield hosted the British Open. Protests against its no-woman members policy overshadowed the on-course action for much of the time. Politicians boycotted the event, not that that should necessarily be seen as a bad thing, bandwagon hoppers that they are.

Anyway, Dawson remarked at that time that the "natural reaction is to resist these pressures, because we actually don't think they have very much substance". Someone's clearly dropped something in Dawson's porridge.

St Andrews' decision leaves Muirfield, Royal Troon -- which hosts the 2016 Open -- and Royal St George's in Kent as the only clubs on the Open rota who still shut the door on women members.

When Augusta, host club of the Masters, generously flung open its doors to invited women members two years ago -- by which time blacks had been welcomed as members for a whole 22 years -- it chose two, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and prominent local businesswoman Darla Moore.

St Andrews have hand-picked 15 women for membership, based on their contribution to the game.

But is it so wrong to have one-sex-only clubs?

There is an argument that there are men and women who actually enjoy the chance to relax in an environment that is free of the other half of the population. That misses the point. The days of actively banning one half of the population from sporting clubs should have been washed away years ago. You choose to apply for membership. Whether you get it or not is another thing, but denying the right to apply? No.

We're well into the 21st century and it's simply not conceivable to have perhaps the game's most famous club without a single woman member.

In two years' time, golf is to return to the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee is on a gender equality drive looking ahead to the Tokyo Games in 2020.

Redressing the breakdown of sports at the Games is under way at several sports, the aim being to have more female athletes. If that means trimming men's events -- as distinct from simply enlarging them and thus further bloating the Games from its already corpulent self -- so be it.

Given yesterday's developments, it's fitting that next year's event will be staged at St Andrews.

What chance Troon stepping out of the 19th century in time for the 2016 Open? Don't hold your breath.