Justin Rose’s actions sent a strong but simple message to the women’s golf world: I see you. I respect you. I care.
Rose and his wife, Kate, recently unveiled details of the new Rose Ladies Series in a Telegraph exclusive. The series, which consists of seven one-day events in England, kicks off on June 18 at Brokenhurst Manor Golf Club and includes a stop at Royal St. George’s, which was set to host the men’s British Open later this summer before the coronavirus hit.
“You cannot distinguish between men’s golf and ladies golf,” Rose told The Telegraph. “The dreams are same from the outset, but it is the opportunity and the platform that is skewed.”
That sound you just heard is the collective women’s golf world exhaling deeply. Finding an ally does so much to lighten the load.
As Rose readies to get back to work on the PGA Tour this week at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas, the Ladies European Tour won’t get started again until the Evian Championship in early August. The LPGA is slated to restart in late July.
Rose put 35,000 pounds (about $44,500) of his own money toward the prize fund, which is otherwise made from player entry fees. The money is nice, of course, but this isn’t about the money.
As former Women’s British Open champion Karen Stupples said, it’s about validation. It’s about respect. A former No. 1, major champion and Olympic gold medalist saw a need in women’s sport and lent his support.
“I believe that Justin, as a top player in the world, is saying that he believes these women are tremendous athletes and they deserve a chance,” said Stupples. “In this tough economic climate. … he didn’t want to see them getting left behind.”
This all got started when LET player Liz Young and Jason MacNiven, a head professional and custom-fitter at Brokenhurst Manor, decided to put together a one-day event at the club for English professionals. A story about the event ran in the Telegraph last Sunday, and later that evening Rose’s management company called Young to offer support.
Sky Sports signed on as a broadcast partner, giving English golfers incredible exposure. Young, a member at Brokenhurst, had 32 players signed up prior to the Rose announcement. She’s had nine more entries turned in since then. If hotels were open in the U.K., Young said the field would likely triple in size.
Dame Laura Davis is signed up along with LET winners Meghan MacLaren and Alice Hewson, who won the South African Open in her pro debut last March.
“It’s so powerful,” wrote MacLaren in a text. “It’s not just the events being created and the platform for us, it’s the entire conversation around it. It’s a conversation we’ve been having endlessly in the female game, but the simple fact is even collectively, our voices aren’t as loud as a top male player. … that’s just the world we’ve been living in.”
The Telegraph noted that Rose’s agent, Paul McDonnell, will act as the series manager while Excel Sports management will run the tournaments.
“We need feminist voices to not just be female,” Kate Rose, a former top-level gymnast, told The Telegraph. “We have to be promoting the sport of golf, which we all love. Opportunities in women’s golf are so much more difficult to come by at the moment, so anything that the men can do to lift up the women, they should be.”
Young, who played the 2016 Women’s British Open while seven months pregnant with daughter Isabelle, wants to make sure there are opportunities down the road for future generations. She’s already thinking about starting a kids’ academy off the event at Brokenhurst that would then allow junior players the chance to walk with their heroes inside the ropes, perhaps raking bunkers.
“If there’s no opportunity,” said Young, “then how do we know?”
LPGA commissioner Mike Whan publicly thanked Rose on twitter for recognizing the opportunity gap that exists between the men’s and women’s games.
“As a male athlete growing up, I never thought about the future of the athletic endeavor I was in,” Whan recently told Golfweek. “I never thought about the future of football or baseball or basketball or hockey. Those sports were going to be just fine. Find me a female playing a sport who isn’t worried about the future of her sport and making sure that the next kid gets more opportunities than her.”
thank you @JustinRose99 . . . “You cannot distinguish between men’s golf and ladies golf. The dreams are same from the outset but it is the opportunity and the platform that is skewed.” https://t.co/gNtIymvmsr
— Michael Whan (@LPGACommish) June 8, 2020
The new Rose Ladies Series also gives British players a much-needed chance to warm up before their next start, which happens to be a major. Two of the next three events on the LET schedule, in fact, are majors, with the Aberdeen Stanford Investments Ladies Scottish Open and AIG Women’s British Open set to follow the Evian.
“What would stop the likes of Henrik Stenson doing it in Sweden,” asked Young, “Martin Kaymer doing it in Germany?”
Rose’s actions could have a ripple effect that go far beyond hosting one-day events in the midst of a global crisis. It’s an outreached hand that breaks through the insular bubble of men’s professional golf to help women who are simply trying to do the same thing.
“Hopefully it pushes people,” said MacLaren,” men and women across the industry to question why things have been enabled to get this far, and do more to change it.”
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