EQUITY: On and off the course LPGA players still earn less money than their PGA Tour counterparts. Why? A BBC study published in 2021 revealed that golf ranks near the top of all professional sports when it comes to a gender pay gap between men and women. The study examined 48 sports and golf, football and basketball were the only three in which at least one of the top league’s major competitions did not have equal prize money. To illustrate how wide the gap still is – especially in golf ’s four Majors – in 2021, the winner of the men’s U.S. Open earned 2.25 million versus the women’s champion, who pocketed 1 million. This gender pay gap needs to close. Before I close let me highlight a pair of trailblazers and two of this country’s greatest golfers ever: AdaMackenzie andMarlene Stewart Streit (on a side note, both are Honorary Members of Westmount). Often called “the first lady of Canadian golf,” Mackenzie won the Canadian Open Championships and Closed Championships five times each between 1919 and 1931. Also an entrepreneur, in 1924, Mackenzie opened the Ladies’ Golf and Tennis Club of Toronto as the first in North America to offer membership to women only. The octogenarian Streit, an Order of Canada member, still golfs regularly. She is the only Canadian in the World Golf Hall of Fame and is also a member of both the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. She won the LouMarsh Trophy (for Canada’s top athlete) not once, but twice. Her list of accomplishments in golf is long, but a few highlights include: 11 CanadianWomen’s Amateur titles; 1 British Ladies Amateur; 1 U.S. Women’s Amateur and 1 Australian Women’s Amateur. Current Canadians on the LPGA Tour such as Brooke Henderson and Maude-Aimee Leblanc lead a new charge of trailblazing women in the professional golf ranks; they have already inspired many young girls to take up the game. To all of the men reading this: stop with gender-based stereotypes and long-held notions of what you deem is a woman’s role. Park your prejudice permanently. Open your heart and your mind to the possibilities. If it helps, think of your granddaughter and the smile on her face the first time she sunk a long putt or hit the green in regulation as you shared a round together. Golf is for everyone. Golf CSANews | SPRING 2022 | 43
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