Just when it seemed as if September 18, 2014, could become no more momentous, a poll result has overturned years of tradition at that well kent Scottish institution, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St Andrews.

A postal vote yesterday overturned a 260-year long ban on the admission of women. Given the club's long-standing resistance to the change, this will seem to some even more extraordinary than Scotland's tightly fought constitutional referendum.

The margin favouring change on the R&A's ballot (85 per cent in favour, 15 per cent against) is large but does it indicate a wholesale change of heart at the St Andrews institution? Have the denizens of the prestigious club room discovered their inner feminist?

That is perhaps unlikely. Embarrassment at the anachronistic and increasingly ludicrous rule excluding women has apparently has little impact on the R&A for many years past.

While the rest of the country and indeed the Western world have made steady progress towards the dismantling of archaic barriers to equality, the R&A has stood firm, meeting the public pressure with an equal and opposite force.

Other high-profile clubs in Scotland have long since embraced the 21st century with their membership rules, with the exception of Muirfield in Edinburgh and Royal Troon in Ayrshire (though it has a separate women's club). Clubs that continue to exclude women will be under added pressure to change their tune; Muirfield is already set to review its rules.

So what might have produced this belated change of heart at the home of golf? The R&A is golf's governing body and administers the Open Championship. It has some highly significant commercial relationships, including with HSBC, which has made no secret of its unease over the policy of its affiliated club excluding women.

Other sponsors of The Open include Mastercard, Ralph Lauren, Nikon and Rolex, and it might be that they too could have been running out of patience.

Scottish Government ministers might also have played their part: three years ago, they announced that the Government would be making investments worth £2 million between 2014 and 2018 to attract tens of thousands more children to the game of golf, part of the legacy plans for the 2014 Ryder Cup.

Ministers have made no secret of their disdain for clubs that have policies excluding women, though they are maddeningly powerless to do anything about it when the institution is a private members' club.

Whatever the cause, the change is of course welcome. Golf is to be included in the next Olympics and it would have gone wholly against the spirit of those games to have the sport's ruling body propping up such discrimination.

Some traditions should not be preserved.