What the title assumes
The title assumes that a women’s major golf championship has been played in the Middle East and that one woman won it first. As far as can be established, that is not the case in the way the title implies. The recognised women’s majors have been held in the United States, Britain and France. Professional women’s golf has reached the Gulf in recent decades, but those events are not among the majors, and this article names no first winner. Nothing like it occurred in 1967.
What follows is a hedged account of how golf arrived in the region, how the modern courses were built, and where women’s professional events fit in.
A late start for golf
Golf was a late arrival in most of the Middle East. A few clubs were founded in the early to mid twentieth century, mostly for expatriate communities connected with oil, shipping, diplomacy or colonial administration. Egypt, with its long-standing links to Britain, had some of the region’s older courses, and there were clubs in places such as Lebanon, Iran and Israel in the decades before the 1970s. Detail on specific founding dates varies, and accounts should be checked against club histories.
In the Arabian Peninsula, conditions were a major obstacle. Courses require large amounts of water, and early layouts on the Gulf coast often used sand or oiled-sand “browns” in place of grass greens. Only with wealth from oil and the growth of cities and tourism did grass courses become practical on a large scale.
The 1967 context
The year 1967 in the region is remembered for conflict. The Six-Day War in June reshaped the map of the Middle East, and the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 in November. In the south of the Arabian Peninsula, Britain’s departure from Aden was approaching and was completed at the end of the year. Golf, on the whole, was a minor pastime confined to a few clubs, and women’s competitive golf in the region was minimal.
It follows that no women’s major, and no comparable milestone, took place in the Middle East in 1967, and the continent-by-continent pattern seen elsewhere in this cluster holds: women’s professional golf was based in the United States and, in amateur form, in Britain and Europe.
Building the Gulf courses
The big change came in the last decades of the twentieth century. Reportedly, the late 1980s saw the first major grass championship course in the Gulf region open in Dubai, and others followed in the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and elsewhere. Developers built courses as part of resort and residential schemes, and the desert layouts became tourist attractions and venues for professional events. Floodlit play, irrigated fairways and imported turf became typical, with the environmental cost of water use drawing continuing debate.
Golf in the region has largely been shaped by this construction boom, which made it quite different from the club-led growth of Britain or the United States. Whether the sport has deep local roots varies from country to country, and a general article cannot settle that.
Women’s professional events
Professional women’s golf arrived in the Gulf later still. The Ladies European Tour has staged events in the region, with Dubai a regular host in the 2000s, and in more recent years Saudi Arabia has reportedly hosted women’s professional tournaments, drawing attention for being held in a country where women’s sport only gained wider visibility in the last decade or so. The exact history of these events, including their names, sponsors and winners, is not given in detail here, because it has changed from year to year and the winners are best checked against the tours’ own records.
It is accurate to say that these tournaments have been significant in raising the profile of the women’s game in the region, but they are regular tour events. They have not been among the recognised major championships, so describing any of them as “a major” would be misleading.
Women golfers from the region
Women golfers from the Middle East have been few at the top level. Some players of Middle Eastern heritage compete on the major tours, often after growing up elsewhere. Local participation has increased through federations, academies and school programmes, and women’s amateur events have appeared in a number of countries. As with the history of Asian and African women players, a general account has to stay modest. The honest summary is that the region is still in the early stages of a women’s competitive golf tradition.
A fair summary
- The women’s majors have been held in the United States, Britain and France, and not in the Middle East.
- Golf arrived late in the Gulf, and the modern course-building boom came in the later decades of the twentieth century.
- Professional women’s events have appeared in the region in the twenty-first century, mostly as part of the wider tours.
- Nothing of the kind implied by the title happened in 1967, a year dominated in the region by war and diplomacy.
The title’s premise is best read as a prompt for the real story: a young and rapidly changing golfing landscape, in which women’s professional golf is a recent addition rather than a long-established tradition.