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A Scottish-born transgender golfer has successfully qualified for membership on the LPGA Tour, a scenario a former professional on the top women’s tour has called “unfair.”
Hailey Davidson, the first male golfer to win a women’s minor league professional event three years ago, advanced through the early stages of Q School this weekend and now moves on to the next phase in October.
The 31-year-old, originally from Ayrshire but now based in Florida, said her intention was to “make Scotland proud” by earning an LPGA card, despite figures such as Judy Murray labelling the ongoing quest “wrong”.
On Monday, Amy Olson, who finished runner-up in two women’s majors during her decade on the tour, added her voice to the dissent.
“This is unfair,” the American wrote on social media. “These women have worked too hard and too long to have to stand by and watch a man fight for their position. The only fair path is politics based on sex, not gender.”
However, Davidson, who nearly qualified for the US Women’s Open in June, is unapologetic and recently lashed out at her critics. “I will never understand athletes who blame a transgender athlete for their own athletic failures,” Davidson wrote on Instagram. “If you don’t take responsibility for your failures, you will never be good enough to make it.”
Davidson competed as a man in 2015 before starting hormone therapy and has since dismissed claims of an unfair advantage, saying the driver runs 30 metres less than before the sex change.
Other sports have announced increased protections for women’s sports in recent years, but Davidson wouldn’t be the first transgender golfer to play on a top tour. In 2004, Denmark’s Mianne Bagger qualified for the Ladies European Tour (LET).
Born in Copenhagen, Bagger began playing golf at the age of eight and was considered such a promising prospect that by the age of 14 they were photographed at a golf camp alongside Greg Norman.
Bagger underwent gender reassignment surgery and, at the age of 37, persuaded the LET to change its “female at birth” membership rule and spent several years on Tour, recording a few top-10 finishes.
But now 58, Bagger believes there should be limits on transgender women’s participation in women’s sports. “I’m seen as a bit of a hypocritical voice, so I just have to accept the abuse,” Bagger said in 2022. “I still think transgender women should have access to women’s sports… [but] “I simply do not agree with the current relaxed policies that require less and less medical intervention for males entering women’s sport.”
