Women’s British Open breaks new ground at Muirfield

GULLANE: In a week when England’s European Championship football victory was hailed as a major breakthrough for female sport, Muirfield will make history by staging the Women’s British Open golf championship.

The famed Scottish links course has been host to 16 men’s British Opens — but the club has not always been so welcoming to women and received widespread criticism with a vote to maintain an all-male membership policy in 2016.

Following the backlash — and a threat to remove the club from the Open rota — the decision was overturned in 2017 and five years on the best women’s golfers in the world will face the…