The New Face of Women's Golf

This is Carly Booth, 21, who is playing in the Ricoh Women’s British Open at St Andrews.

Not dressed like that, obviously, ‘cos there’s nowhere to keep her tees and pitch repairer.

She posed for ESPN Magazine’s “The Body Issue”.

Her ambition is to improve participation in ladies’ golf. How?

By making it more glamorous.

Leaving that swiftly aside, let us continue to the icky fact that this photo is how her father found out she had a tattoo. Yes, you read that right. Her father looked at this picture.

Leaving THAT even more swiftly aside, I imagine that GlenAlmond College in Perthshire is doubtless trying to deny she was educated there. No, not because of the nude picture.

 

Because of this.

The full quotation is :

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Now I appreciate that she adapted it, ‘cos the full quotation is actually extremely gloomy, but the missing ‘in’ makes that sentence a bit of a nonsense, ungrammatical and quite puzzling. Apparently it reflects her ‘drive for success’ (I see what she did thar!) but I don’t quite see how. If she means she can’t rely on luck to make her a great golfer, that’s common sense, not a drive for success.  And the ellipses at the end worry me. Are you supposed to turn her over and find the rest of the quote tattooed on her butt?

Here is the full story of her planned contribution to golf :

Miss Booth said she wanted to make golf more appealing for girls. ‘I paint my nails, I wear big earrings,’ she explained. ‘I wear a lot of colour, but I wear pink the most.

‘I think it’s only going to be a positive outcome if we all try to make ladies’ golf a bit more glamorous.

Male golf has been more dominant. We want young girls to see us and think, “Oh, I love her – I love what she’s wearing”. We want them to pick up the sport and we want to be good role models.’

Here are her stumbling blocks as I see it.

·         Girls who are into glamour usually aren’t watching golf.

·         Girls who are into golf aren’t watching it for fashion tips.

But I find myself totally charmed by the superb irony of a naked, tattoed girl announcing that she wants to be a good role model, while at the same time I am grateful that she did not do this some years ago when my daughter developed a taste for golf, because said daughter would have run a mile in the opposite direction and probably be playing netball today.

As to male golf being dominant – well, I’m going to leave the last word to 82-PGA-Tour-event winner and one of the top players in the world for most of four decades, Sam Snead.

“Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot.”