Role models, then community, then infrastructure. Now it is moving faster than anyone expected.
It’s the question I keep coming back to. Why is women’s golf, after years of growing steadily, building quietly, doing the work without always getting the credit, suddenly everywhere? Why are the beginner clinics full? Why are women in their 20s showing up to courses in numbers that are making general managers rethink everything? Why does it feel, for the first time, like something is genuinely, irreversibly shifting?
I should introduce myself. I’m Remy Taylor, the new editor of Australian Golf Digest Women. I come to this role obsessed with where the sport is going next. The content. The culture. The conversations. The mindset of the modern female golfer, who turns out to be one of the most interesting people in sport right now.
That is where I have been spending my time. And this issue is what came out of it.
Part of the answer to “why now?” is visibility. When you can watch Steph Kyriacou lead a major championship and then hear her talk, openly and without armour, about the heart-to-heart she had with herself on the 13th hole. What are you doing, this is what you dream of, why are you scared. It does something. To young women watching. To women who have always loved this sport but never quite seen themselves at the very top of it. Kyriacou is our cover story and I will say this plainly: she is one of the most compelling people I have spoken to in sport. Not because she is polished. Because she is the opposite.
Part of it is community. I became slightly obsessed, in researching this issue, with the image of nine Australian women packed into one house during a tournament week. Hannah Green, Grace Kim, Karis Davidson, Steph Kyriacou. Keeping each other sharp, keeping each other humble, ruthlessly, in the very particular way that only Australians can, and building careers alongside one another on the other side of the world. That is not a small thing. That is a culture. And cultures, it turns out, are contagious.
Part of it is that the entry points are finally multiplying. The clinics. The social formats. The events that are creating new entry points into the game and making it more accessible than it has ever been. We look at all of that in this issue. The people building the infrastructure, the clubs opening their doors, the beginners who showed up nervous and left wanting to come back.
And part of it, the part I keep landing on, is that the demand was always there. It just needed somewhere to go.
This is my first issue. I am aware, with some excitement, that it may find its way to readers who are new to this magazine, perhaps discovering it for the first time. I hope it gives them every reason to stay.
Because if this issue has taught me anything, it’s that the women inside this sport are not standing still. They are competing, building, connecting and doing it with a passion and competitive spirit that is impossible to ignore.
