All-male Muirfield Golf Club is an 'embarrassment to Scotland', poll finds

The poll follows a vote against allowing women to join the prestigious Scottish golf club

Golfers play at Muirfield Golf Club Gullane, Scotland (Getty Images)

Around three-quarters of Scottish people consider Muirfield golf club’s ban on women members to be “damaging to Scotland’s reputation”, a new poll has found.

Eighty per cent of the 1,000 Scots surveyed also believe women should have an equal standing to men in the country’s golf clubs.

The poll follows a vote against allowing women to join the prestigious Scottish golf club controlled by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (HCEG), which led it to being dropped from The Open Championship roster.

The East Lothian golf club held the ballot in May after a two-year consultation on membership, but failed to get 432 of its 648 eligible voters to vote in favour of female members, meaning it failed to reach the two-thirds majority required to change the policy.

Of the 616 members who voted, 64 per cent voted in favour of admitting women, while 36 per cent voted against. In total, those voting in favour outnumbered those voting against by 178 votes.

Consequently, the R&A stripped Muirfield of its Open Championship status. “The Open is one of the world's great sporting events and going forward we will not stage the Championship at a venue that does not admit women as members,” said R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers in a statement.

HCEG Captain Henry Fairweather defended the outcome of the vote saying: “The Honourable Company is a members club, and, as such, the members decide the rules of the club, including its membership policy. Women will continue to be welcome at Muirfield on the course and in the clubhouse as guests and visitors, as they have been for many years."

Letters seen by the Scotsman, revealed a group of 30 male members wrote a letter stating that accepting female members would “create difficulties” as they would have no grasp of playing a foursomes round before and after lunch as well as raising fears of slow play.

“It will take a very special lady golfer to be able to do all the things that are expected of them in the template which is suggested and the ladies’ membership as a whole may not meet this standard,” the letter stated.

The vote has been dubbed “simply indefensible” by Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, while Prime Minister David Cameron labelled it “outdated”.

Maggie Chao, a spokeswoman from 38 Degrees, the campaign group that commissioned the poll, said: “The majority of Muirfield's members actually voted to admit female members.

"As this poll makes clear, the overwhelming majority of Scots believe that women should have the same standing as men in all of Scotland's golf clubs.

"This poll gives the club an opportunity to revisit their decision and bring their membership policy into line with what most Scots - and most of their members - want."

Muirfield remains one of just two golf courses on The Open Championship roster to reject female members, along with Royal Troon – which has written to its 800 members to raise the possibility of a similar vote after hosting this year’s Open in July.

Additional reporting by Press Association