Women and Golf:
The Untold Story of Becky English
Her Dad beat Jack Nicklaus in a golf tournament. He was dedicated to his family thus kept his amateur status throughout his life and played brilliants for many, many years. He had sons who became great golfers, always invited to play with their Dad and who received lessons from great golfers, ample time on the course, and were part of their Dad’s team.
Becky played a little golf. She loved the game. She knew she could be a very good golfer. She was athletic. But, she was not part of the family “golf team.” Sound familiar. Becky grew up in the 1950 and 1960’s and that was before Title IX, before Bernard Langer partnered with his eldest child, Jackie, in the 2018 “Father-Son Golf Tournament” sponsored by PNC.
“Father-son” – a relic in the world destined to end gender discrimination at some point, but alive and well not only in “name” but in the fact that no other professional golfer has ever had a daughter as a partner in this tournament except Langer in 2018. Barnard Langer, to his credit, had his daughter play in the 2013 Father-Son Challenge, a professional golf tournament.
I write this short article because in 1969 a wonderful father, Oree Marsalis, had three daughters who were great golfers in Shreveport, Louisiana. I played on the “Boys Golf Team” and was lucky enough to be paired for one match with one of the Marsalis’ girls in a golf match. We did not have a “Girls Golf Team.” That was 50 years ago, and there is still a lot of progress to be made to allow our 21st century “Becky English’s” full reign on the golf course, as equals, as people we genuinely invite and invest in to become as good of a golfer as they can be.
I recently quit a New Jersey country club because while they had a great library, which I used extensively, it was located, no kidding, in the MEN’S LOCKER ROOM. I asked them to move the library to a gender-neutral location. The owner of the club agreed, but then I was told by the Director of Golf, a woman, a few weeks later, that the library would not be moved out of the men’s locker room. I decided that I would belong to no place where my daughter and grand-daughter could not go and use the library like all normal people should be able to use.
Where do we go from here? We ask Becky English permission to publish this article, but is that enough? We know that girls and women are still being excluded from country clubs, and many golf activities. We are hopeful that the ascendance of Suzy Whaley as President of the PGA will help this organization expand its efforts to promote the game for women and grow the sport in terms of women and girls’ golf program. We note that the PGA did not even allow women to be members until 1979 and only after being sued by a woman who wanted to make sure that women belonged to the organization that in 1916 stated that its goal was to “promote interest in the game of golf and grow the sport.” https://www.pga.com/pga-america/pga-feature/creating-pga-america-100-years-ago-day
The PGA has come a long way, but with fewer than 2,000 women members out of 25,000 members, it has a long way to go. Becky English’s challenges and obstacles to becoming a great golfer shall be relegated to the past in America, Europe, Asia, and the forward thinking areas of the world only by our recognition of and apology for stopping women in their tracks who wanted to be, could have been, and should have been great golfers for all of the 400 year history of golf. Today, we have the opportunity to begin anew, to build on our recent efforts, but most importantly to identify every area of golf, every person in golf who is not treating women golfers and women golfers to be fairly and equally with men or young male golfers, and help them see the light that golf is a game for the entire world to enjoy, not just 50% of the world.
Let us call this from this day forward, “The Becky English Program.”
About the Author
Herb Rubenstein passed the PGA Players Ability Test in August, 2018 at age 65, making a twenty-foot par putt on the 18th hole when he played his first round of the PAT, and then made a fifty-foot birdie putt from the fringe on the 18th hole the second time he played the 18th to shoot 80 -78 – 158, exactly the qualifying number. He is a golf pro with Golf Pro Delivered, www.golfgpd.com, and can be reached at herb@golfgpd.com
He was captain of the Washington and Lee Golf Team in 1974 and serves as Executive Director of the Brooklyn Golf Alliance, www.brooklyngolfalliance.org, a nonprofit that works to bring the joy of the game of golf to inner city minority groups and women who have been under-represented in the game of golf from its inception.