You would think folk had more to do with their time than harass golf clubs that don't allow women to become members.

I speak as a retired golfer. I gave up 25 years ago because I had reached a level of excellence upon which I was unlikely to improve. I was so excellent I was in danger of taking fewer than 100 strokes to finish a round.

The fun then became observing the arcane rules imposed by golf club committees. Excluding women is only the tip of the iceberg.

Some mythical examples: a wife rushes to be with her husband after he has a heart attack in the clubhouse but cannot see him because she is only allowed into the dirty bar. The spouse of a member is admitted to the premises only because she was mistaken for the exotic dancer who had been hired for a gentlemen's soiree.

Rules can be breathtakingly banal. Women allowed on the carpeted area of the clubhouse bar but not the parquet flooring.

Men also suffer from nit-picking regulations. Such as being too well-dressed to enter the dirty bar.

Visitors who do not meet imagined dress standards are easy targets. Turn up smart but casual and you will be asked to put on the jacket, tie and pair of shoes kept for sartorial emergencies. You will be transformed from a normally clad person into Coco the Clown.

There is the opportunity for retaliation. No end of entertainment can be had even in a golf club car park at members' reaction when you prepare for your 18 holes by changing into sandshoes and a Celtic top.

Picture a cheeky Weegie lawyer who has managed to access the bar in the men-only Muirfield club and asks a bloke in a fancy red jacket to get him a gin and tonic. The gent in the jaiket replies haughtily that he is the captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. So why are you dressed like a waiter is the response.

This debate about women was sparked off by the august Augusta National course in the US inviting Condoleezza Rice to be their first female member.

Ms Rice was George W Bush's secretary of state and partner in crime. If I ran a golf club I wouldn't let anyone in who helped start the Iraq War.