A female amateur golfer who has written in the past about how golf clubs can recruit more women to play the game has said she still experiences unwelcoming attitudes from men and women in golf.
Kerry Cooper, who’s been a golfer for 30 years and wrote for The Golf Business in 2017 about the success she’d had recruiting female beginners, said both sexes at an anonymous club made her feel unwelcome, partly because she joined on her own.
“Recently I joined a golf club as a seven-day member on my own,” she said.
“I was super excited, super positive and ready to play lots of mixed golf to improve my own game.
“I joined after playing just one trial round as the course lay-out really appealed to me; quite a different front and back nine, giving me lots of variation.”
Kerry said the club displayed an unprofessional attitude towards recruiting female golfers.
“I quickly started sharing my social media about the club, promoting women’s golf and encouraged a few of my friends to attend a free trial taster session over four weeks going through the motions of beginners’ golf,” she explained.
“To my surprise, none of these were converted to lessons or membership as no contact was made by the club after the taster sessions ended.”
Kerry then detailed her experiences at the club which included, perhaps surprisingly, other women making her feel unwelcome.
“As soon as the membership paperwork was signed for me to join and my direct debit set up, the membership secretary expressed how suddenly unnerved she was that I was joining on my own without knowing anyone at the club, and to my total surprise said: ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do with you within the membership as I don’t think the other ladies are going to accept you.’
“When I asked her why, she replied: ‘Well, they can be a bit snooty and you are joining on your own, they have male partners here and might not like the fact you don’t.’
“At this point I felt judged and discriminated against. At this stage I hadn’t even met anyone; it certainly didn’t make me feel welcome.”
She added that she did get an email from the ladies’ section inviting her to meet up on the back of a mixed competition, so she could meet a few members. However, this was then cancelled due to the weather and after she emailed a few times to try to reschedule, she was not contacted again.
“I mentioned this to the membership secretary who just shrugged it off,” she said.
Some men also failed to make her feel part of the club.
“As a working person I would play nine holes before work pretty much every day, I’d be the first on the course, as a rule, which really suited me, I could rattle nine holes off in just over an hour, which was great,” she said.
“The problems started with weekend play, I was finding it difficult to get on the course unless it was at the tail-end of the afternoon, usually behind several groups of guys who had a tendency to play really slowly.
“One particular day I asked if I could play through and all hell broke loose with a four-ball who told me I shouldn’t even be playing at the weekend and should stick to the dedicated slot awarded to the ladies in the week – one slot a week!
“I pointed out I actually pay for seven full days of membership and was told that women should never be given a seven day membership as the weekends are for male golf!”
In the end, Kerry left the club, after it refused to provide the support she was hoping for following an injury.
“I played at that club for seven months, usually on my own, occasionally I’d invite someone to play with me from other clubs, but I’d usually end up fitting around the men playing until a shoulder injury forced me to suddenly stop playing,” she said.
“I wrote to the membership secretary to request if I could cancel my membership as my doctor had advised my golfing would be off the agenda for several months, I was bluntly told I’d signed a contract for a year and if I cancelled my direct debit I would be contacted by a debt collector.
“I asked if I could take a holiday break and resume when my shoulder was healed; again I was told no, therefore I paid for the remaining year and left.
“It was such a shame, yet again a golf club hadn’t looked after a member correctly.”
Kerry is now playing golf again and hopes to be recruiting more women to a club shortly.
If you’d like to chat to Kerry, email: cooperkerry@me.com
Kerry has appeared on a podcast to talk about this article, which can be accessed here.
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