Among the unreconstructed dinosaurs who voted to keep women out of Muirfield golf club are some charming chaps. Retired doctors and businessmen, they are perfectly courteous company, and even entertaining, in the presence of females.

I can say this with some certainty because Scotland is a small place and the membership of the East Lothian club includes several dear friends of mine and, more to the point, their dear dads.

It was this older generation that was apparently in the vanguard against change and led the campaign to reject lady members from the private institution.

They were in the minority but club rules insist that altering the constitution requires a two thirds majority (a good idea perhaps for other plebiscites) and the diehards defeated the modernisers by 16 votes.

They will now be able to keep their precious foursomes play to themselves, and the "uncompromising challenge" of their fine links will not be ruined by the fairer sex.

It’s a shame they managed to lose the Open, after golf’s ruling body, the R&A, said it would not stage the Championship at a venue that does not admit women members.

But the silly fools will not mind too much because a far more serious tradition has been preserved: their lunch arrangements.

It comes as no surprise that lunch ranked so highly in the list of "risks" cited in a letter circulated by club veterans. Having ladies join them on the green would be bad enough, but allowing them to share the trough was a step too far for the MCPs.

"It will take a very special lady golfer to be able to do all the things that are expected of them," they agreed, as they set back progress – in sport and in Scotland – several decades.

Their wives know who they are, and so do their sons. The former are said to be in collusion and if they are it is because the club acts as a sort of crèche.

For the best part of a day these long-suffering women can park their aged spouses at Muirfield, knowing that, by pick up time, they will have given their hip replacements a workout and been so well fed and watered that an early bath and bed are all that’s required.

Their sons, on the waiting list since birth, are different. Inducted into the inner sanctum they have, it seems, ungratefully rebelled against their throwback papas. We can only imagine the scenes over the nursery food and jugs of claret, and applaud them for seeing the light.

They offer a little redemption in what has been an embarrassing episode for Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon, who described the Muirfield vote as "simply indefensible", felt forced to stress the golfers did not reflect Scottish society.

It is true Scotland has high achieving women in every walk of life, from Ms Sturgeon herself to the leaders of the main opposition parties, the auditor general, the chief medical officer and so on and on.

But Muirfield is by no means the lone bastion of male chauvinism in a country ambivalent about equality. The club was allowed to host the Open as recently as 2013, and Royal Troon in Ayrshire, which staging this year’s Open Championship in July, remains male only. It is undertaking a membership review but may not complete it by the summer.

The R&A began admitting women less than two years ago, not before it banned the then principal of St Andrews University, Louise Richardson, from joining, a privilege extended to all her male predecessors. She said members waved their club ties at her, which does make you wonder why women would want access to these playgrounds.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, inadvertently rubbed shoulders at a party last week with denizens of the mysterious, men-only Von Poser Society; the secret Speculative Society ended its single sex ethos just last year when Edinburgh University threatened to evict it from its Old College rooms; and there are still Burns Suppers across Scotland that bar women.

While these old boys’ networks may give Scotland a bad name, they are mostly insignificant. The loss of the Open, on the other hand, affects the whole country - the Equality and Human Rights Commission said Muirfield’s decision could cost the Scottish economy £100 million.

The codgers maintain women would not fit in because they can’t perform at the men’s level, but as they toast each other with their customary stickies (liqueurs), they should acknowledge it is they who have become their club’s biggest handicap.