Sportswriter Oscar Fraley created a stir in 1964 when he wrote an article titled “I Say, Ban Women Golfers,” which appeared in Golf magazine. “Men, remember when it used to be Our Club?” he wrote. “When the only woman in the clubhouse was old Sophie and her feather duster.” Fraley wished for a return to the past and courses without women. “They play too slowly and clutter up the course, a Clyde Beatty complete with whip and gun would have the temerity to ask to play through. If he did, the odds are he wouldn’t get permission.”
Farley also portrayed women golfers as being far too serious and sticklers for the rules. “Most of the time when men play it is a casual, sporting affair of give and take. But when the ladies go at it bub, it’s a federal case if one of them so much as slightly warps Rule 96, Section 8.” This sentiment was nothing new. Paul Gallico wrote in 1941 that men never “take a game as seriously as a woman does. And a man views his opponent with complete personal detachment.” He contended that “women golfers seem to be the worst sports and cattiest of all the strenuous sisters.”
Farley’s article elicited a number of responses from readers. One woman from Tennessee summed it up in writing: “Girls, don’t you worry. We’ve been strong for centuries and we have always won.” But the criticism didn’t end. In 1966, the year the National Organization for Women was formed to push for women’s rights, another scathing article against women golfers appeared, this time in Life magazine.
Although author Marshall Smith pointed out that women were having a substantial economic impact on the game, he proceeded to lay out the age-old arguments of women being highly emotional and a nuisance to male golfers. “Their behavior can be awful, and the truth is that a considerable number of them ought not to be playing the game at all – at least not when strokes must be counted.”
Like Farley, Smith argued that women were too serious. “What we are dealing with is a state of mind. Their desire to win can flare so fiercely that no trick seems too despicable to try, no technicality too trivial to be overlooked.” They were portrayed as poor sports and criticized for their influence in club life. “They run things,” said a club professional in Dallas. “If they don’t like the way things are going, they’ll tell their husbands and he’ll vote like she says. At our club they can play every day…You’re not going to pass any rule unless the ladies want it passed.” As Marshall concluded, “Let’s face it; men have surrendered the golf courses. The only answer, if there is one, may be found in scientific reports about the ill-effects of sunshine on the complexion – how it makes the skin look prematurely old and wrinkled.”