While there is evidence that the wives of Musselburgh fishermen played in a golf competition in 1811, the first ladies’ golf club was formed at St Andrews in 1867, where they played with one club on what is now known as the Himalayas putting green. England soon followed suit with early ladies’ clubs at Westward Ho! and at Wimbledon. They were the wives and daughters of the gentlemen members at those clubs and played in full-length dresses with neatly tied bonnets on courses that were little more than extended putting greens.

A perception exists that English golf clubs in the late 19th century were male bastions, mirroring the gentlemen’s clubs of that era, filled with clubbable fellows, and that “men-only” golf clubs were the norm rather than the exception. Ladies, where they were allowed to play, were cossetted away in their own private tea rooms or separate pavilions and were restricted, not just by their cumbersome clothing, but also on the days and times when they could play.

However, a decisive moment arrived in April 1893 when the Ladies Golf Union was formed, led by a formidable woman, Miss Issette Pearson, who was a member of Wimbledon Ladies golf club. Women’s golf had a national body to organise championships, establish handicaps and to encourage their participation. The first ladies’ golf championship was arranged to be played in June 1893 at Lytham & St Anne’s on a course measuring 4,200 yards (no longer a game played on an extended putting green). In advance of the event, Horace Hutchinson, the renowned golfer, wrote: