Shona Malcolm knows what it's like to have a working room with a view. In her role as chief executive of the Ladies Golf Union, for instance, she would peer out from her office on The Scores and take in the shimmering sights of St Andrews Bay. These days, as the new secretary of the Scottish PGA, she can birl her swivel chair towards the window and gaze out to the King's Course and the majestic splendour of Gleneagles. "Both of them have advantages but, when the weather is good, I'd say the King's is a wee bit ahead in terms of a view," suggested Malcolm, whose daily fix of inspiring vistas is bettered only by this correspondent's sweeping panorama of The Herald's sports desk.
Way back in 1901, that 'Great Triumvirate' of James Braid, Harry Vardon and JH Taylor led a move to form the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA). Some 77 years later, in 1978, the Women's Professional Golfers' Association was established and became an official part of the wider PGA. Here in 2015, it is Malcolm who is blazing something of a trail ... not that she'll want it to be looked at in that way, of course.
The canny Ayrshire woman may have become the first female to take up the reins of one of the PGA's seven British and Irish regions in the organisation's long history but Malcolm is swift to play down the significance. "Golf is changing," she said of a sport that continues to battle with long-standing gender issues. "You always have to remember the historical background. It was single gender but we are moving forward. People keep saying to me 'you're the first woman secretary in the PGA's history' but my response tends to be 'yes and hopefully there will be more but it should always be about who is the best person for the job'. We shouldn't be talking about gender now. Everybody who is the 'first' to do something like this always gets that bit more profile but it should simply come down to the best person for the job, regardless of gender."
Not long after Malcolm was unveiled as the Scottish PGA's successor to Brian Mair, the newly formed Scottish Golf Ltd, the amateur governing body that was forged following the historic merger of the Scottish Golf Union (SGU) and the Scottish Ladies Golfing Association (SLGA), appointed Eleanor Cannon as its first chairperson. "That to me was a very encouraging appointment," added Malcolm. "Eleanor is coming in with really fresh ideas and no baggage from either the SGU or SLGA. That should be a good fresh start."
Malcolm is keen to make a fresh start of her own after "faffing about" in the months since she left the Ladies Golf Union (LGU) at the tail end of 2014. "My golf handicap is competitive again though," she noted. "But it was the right time to move on from the LGU. You can only do so much in one place and you end up beating your head off a brick wall."
The scramble to attract new sponsors to the Tartan Tour, while maintaining existing backers, remains a key part of her new remit. "We all want to up the ante on the Tartan Tour, raise its profile and make it a kind of aspirational thing for the players while engaging more with those members who don't get out and play as much but are just as key to the PGA ," she said.
Malcolm is very much an advocate of working together. The fragmented nature of golf administration in Scotland, and the UK in general, is a consequence of the game's history here but Malcolm remains keen to foster a united front. "I don't think we'll see a Federation but you never say never," she said. "This sense of working together has improved over the years and we are all trying to do the right with all sorts of bodies. I think there are still pockets of 'them and us' where everybody looks after their own patch. Despite all the stuff you read in the media, golf is quite an inclusive game and we are all involved for the right reasons."
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