Mary, Queen of Golf
“Mary, Queen of Scots, was playing sports that were clearly unsuitable for women.”
So claimed respected 16th-century scholar George Buchanan. A damning character assassination at a time when women were forbidden to play anything more strenuous than a friendly game of rounders.
A woman with a competitive streak upset the natural order of things. She might start to seek power that should be beyond her reach. And if she was a Queen? Well, such ambition might lead her to claim another’s throne for her own.
Today, millions of women compete in golf tournaments worldwide without prejudice. Yet in the Middle Ages, sporty women were an oddity — even dangerous.
Mary Queen of Scots is credited as the first female golfer in history, yet her enthusiasm for a round of golf may have proved her undoing.
Contrary Mary
Today we celebrate women’s achievement in sport but in the 1500s, a woman placing herself at the forefront of a man’s game was a dangerous move. Noblewomen in particular had a lot to lose in terms of reputation, none more so than the Queen of Scotland.
Yet Mary consistently toed the line of propriety. She arrived in Scotland following the premature death of her husband Francis II, the teenage King of France. While her bright and brilliant ways dazzled the French court, in her homeland of Scotland Mary found herself a foreigner. Her manners and more importantly her Catholicism were viewed with suspicion by a largely Protestant court.
With unfriendly eyes watching her every move, it might have been canny for Mary to play it safe. Discretion didn’t seem to be in the young queen’s nature, however. She made no secret of wishing to be named Elizabeth’s heir, and her controversial marriage to the unsuitable Lord Darnley was viewed as an attempt to secure the English throne. To cap it all off, Darnley was Catholic. Add to this Mary’s penchant for masculine sports like golf and it’s easy to see why Queen Elizabeth of England was wary of Scotland’s young, ambitious ruler.
An unfair handicap
Mary learned to play golf during her girlhood in France. She’s even credited as introducing the concept of caddies to golf. In France, Mary’s royal status afforded her the luxury of having military cadets carry her clubs for her and it’s thought that this is where the term ‘caddy’ comes from. St Andrews Links is also thought to have been commissioned by Queen Mary, a now world-famous golf course. One of the world’s greatest golfer’s Tiger Woods said “To win at St Andrews is the ultimate.”
You would think Queen’s Mary’s competency and innovation would be met with admiration when she returned to Scotland, the birthplace of golf. Unfortunately, being a woman and a Catholic gave Mary an unfair handicap, and the Scottish nobles viewed her with suspicion.
This was the period of querelle des femmes or “dispute of women”. A time when society debated how much freedom women should be accorded with and indeed, what women were capable of. Were the ‘weaker sex’ able to reason? Could they be trusted to enter literary and political spheres? Wield clubs on the golf course? Questions that feel shockingly misogynistic to us now were deeply unsettling in the Middle Ages, poking holes in the very fabric of society.
By contrast, where Mary Queen of Scots was bold and reckless, her cousin Queen Elizabeth of England was shrewd and patient. This was an age of Queens, yet Elizabeth seemed to understand the tumult ‘the woman question’ posed. If she was to allay her subjects’ fears, she needed to cultivate a less controversial image. Styling herself the ‘Virgin Queen’ Elizabeth put the interests of England before personal happiness, claiming she was “already bound unto a husband which is the Kingdom of England.”
Mary, on the other hand, was a wild card cloaked in scandal.
By 1566 her marriage to Lord Darnley had soured. In a fit of jealousy, Darnley murdered Mary’s private secretary, David Rizzio, in front of her. In 1567, following an explosion at his home, Darnley was found dead in the garden. Many believe his death was murder, sanctioned by a calculating wife who wanted rid of him.
Scandal continued to dog Mary’s steps until she was forced to abdicate the Scottish throne. In 1586 Mary became embroiled in a Catholic plot to seize the English throne. She was arrested and imprisoned at Fotheringhay Castle while Queen Elizabeth’s advisors gathered reams of evidence against her. Among the many accusations against her character, Mary’s enemies cited her unseemly love of golf.
Apparently, days after the suspicious death of her husband, Lord Darnley, Mary was spotted amusing herself on the golf course. No woman of decent character would force their way into a man’s sport, let alone while she should have been mourning her husband. While this report is likely fictitious in an attempt to discredit Mary’s name, it contributed to a damning character portrait that cost Mary her head. In February 1587 she was executed for treason — infamously, it took three swings of the executioner’s blade to behead her.
Influential women driving golf forward
Mary Queen of Scots might have been the first woman to play a round of golf, but thankfully she wasn’t the last. Today, 6.2 million women play golf worldwide and like Mary, many have left their mark on the sport.
Today, Scotland’s professional female golfers rank among the best in the world. Carly Booth (Comrie) became the youngest-ever Scot to qualify for the Ladies European Tour (LET) and has gone on to win the European tour three times. Glaswegian Kylie Henry won the Ladies European Tour title in 2014 and won her second LET title the same year at the Ladies German Open — breaking a 54-hole record in the process. Catriona Matthew (North Berwick) has scored 11 professional wins during her phenomenal career, which includes captaining the winning European Solheim Cup team at Gleneagles and being awarded an OBE for her services to golf.