Women’s golf is growing. Equal opportunity isn’t there yet.

A Platformation Insight

Women’s golf participation has grown since 2019, but a gap in exposure and opportunity remains. Updated September 2026 from a piece first published in October 2019.

By Maria Walsh, Director, Platformation

Where women’s golf stood in 2019

In 2019 the men’s game looked back to its competitive best, with four different winners of the year’s four majors. For women’s golf it felt like a watershed moment, especially in the UK. The BBC broadcast highlights of the Solheim Cup after agreeing a deal with the Ladies European Tour as part of its #changethegame summer of women’s sport, with full-text commentary on the BBC app and website. It opened up an otherwise untapped audience, one that is crucial to growing the foundations of golf itself.

Martin Heys, the golf professional at Wexham Park Golf Club, called that Solheim Cup at Gleneagles “an outstanding advert for Ladies’ Golf”. He also said that “Ladies’ Golf has a long way to come in today’s supposed modern-day ‘level sports field'”, and encouraged “any lady who’s thinking about going back to, or getting into golf to go for it.” Martin has been at Wexham Park for 30 years, so he has watched the game closely.

Away from the headlines, broadcast deals and sponsorship packages, understanding the barriers to mass participation remains key in helping golf establish itself as a truly accessible global sport. So I went and asked.

What I found when I asked

I often wondered why golf isn’t as popular with women as it is with men. With my analytical nature and love of surveys, I created a short questionnaire in October 2018 and asked a circle of mums in the Chiltern area who had a similar link to golf, sport and leisure as me. Ten women took part, all in their 30s and 40s, in a relationship, with children, a higher education and an above-average household income, and all living within easy reach of a choice of courses and clubs. It’s a small sample, so please read it as a pointer, not proof. None of the ten played golf, and none plays now.

The image of golf came first. Nobody rated it approachable, only 13% rated it entertaining and 43% rated it old fashioned. The reasons for not playing were practical. Six in ten said the game is too time consuming, and six in ten said none of their friends play. Half said they know of no offers for families that would suit them, and half said equipment and membership cost too much. Only one in ten said women aren’t well seen at a golf club.

When I asked what would make them give golf a chance, seven in ten chose a shorter form of the game. Six in ten wanted a family day and six in ten a women’s beginner group. It comes down to time, family and community, and access. The offer needs to fit the lifestyle of a modern family: busy, limited on time, buzzing and fast moving.

My own way in

I started before the survey. In May 2017 I asked my husband to book me, and the children, a lesson with the golf professional at his club. It was fun and challenging, and the pro said I had some talent. But the road to being ready for the course seemed very far away. With two small children, I didn’t think it was realistic to invest that much time and money, and that was the end of my first real attempt.

Two years later, in May 2019, I joined a women’s social club with a golf group for all levels, at Wexham Park Golf Club with Martin as our coach. It was more relaxed and more diverse in age and gender, and having a group of women with a similar experience made it so much easier to get started. In October 2020 I played my first nine holes, about eighteen months after I gave golf another go.

That autumn I searched “golf clubs near me” and looked at what came up: more than 20 clubs, on average six miles and about 15 minutes’ drive from home. I knew of over 40% of them. About a quarter mentioned ladies’ golf on their website, every one of them a private club. I found my way in through a women’s social club, more by luck than design, and getting to golf by accident isn’t a strategy.

I haven’t played for years now, and none of the ten women I surveyed plays either. But golf has stayed in our house. The clubs I bought back then are now used by my son, who is 13 and plays with his friends. My daughter, who is 11, has the basics but doesn’t play.

The grassroots dilemma hasn’t changed. Boys like to do sports together, and golf gives them a great way to do it. Girls, less so.

Women’s golf participation in 2026: what has changed

A lot has changed since that BBC deal. Europe won the Solheim Cup in September 2026, 15 to 13 at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands. The AIG Women’s Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes this summer carried a US$10 million prize fund, up from US$3.25 million in 2018 and the sixth increase in a row, with 34 hours of broadcast, 20% more than in 2025, across Sky Sports, R&A TV, Golf Channel, USA Network and NBC. The Ladies European Tour is playing for more than €40 million this season, a first for the tour.

On the course, the growth is real but uneven. In the R&A’s 2024 figures for its nine biggest markets, women made up 31% of adult participation in golf, but only 25% of adults playing 9 or 18 holes. In alternative formats they made up 50%. In Europe, registered women golfers rose 1.9% in 2025, while registered juniors rose 13.6% to over 478,000, and England now has more than 835,000 registered golfers. Read alongside my small survey, the split points the same way: women asked for a shorter, more flexible game, and that is where they show up in numbers.

Ladies’ golf has developed, and it’s happening. But there is still a gap in exposure and opportunity. The AIG Women’s Open is run by the same R&A that runs The Open, and its prize fund of US$10 million compares with US$17.75 million at The Open at Royal Birkdale this summer: a little over half. On the ground, my own house is a small example of where the pipeline narrows. The boys play. The girls, less so.

Women’s golf participation and the sponsor case in 2026

The sponsor side has moved a long way since 2019. In our Sponsorship Decision Maker Survey 2026 (SDMS 2026, n=204), 69.1% of senior brand buyers invest in women’s sport or are actively considering it. 58.3% have increased their investment in it over the past two years, and only 4.4% have decreased it, the lowest rate of divestment anywhere in the survey. Golf itself ranks fourth of all sports for combined interest among those buyers, at 47.5%, behind football, esports and motorsport.

Sponsor intent is rising. In golf, the deal value hasn’t yet followed. What decides whether that money grows the game is whether a curious woman, or a girl, can find her way in: a shorter format, a beginners’ group, a family day, a club that says so on its website, and a chance to see the game on screen. Those are assets a rights holder or club can build and a sponsor can activate. The first three came straight out of my 2018 survey.

Sponsorship has been slower to follow. Golf’s sponsorship value still sits overwhelmingly with the men’s game, and on the deal data we’ve seen, women’s golf’s share of it has not grown since 2019.

Sources: Solheim Cup 2026 result, Golf Channel; AIG Women’s Open 2026, The R&A; Ladies European Tour 2026 prize fund, Golf Business News; The Open 2026 purse, Golf Channel; Women’s participation, The R&A; European Golf Participation Report 2026, EGA; SDMS 2026, n=204, surveyed August 2026.

Read next

Golf Sponsorship: What the Numbers Actually Show, on where golf’s audience and sponsor value sit today.

The Sponsorship Decision Maker Survey 2026, the brand-side study behind the women’s sport figures above.

Golf Finally Sounds Like Fun, on what is changing in how golf is presented to new audiences.

If you’re working through a sponsorship question that needs clear, credible evidence, we’d welcome a conversation. Email info@platformation.global.

Platformation Enterprise Services Limited is a specialist sponsorship valuation agency, ISO 9001:2015 certified (Certificate No. GB2006233). The only sponsorship valuation agency, to our knowledge, whose methodology has been tested in a court of law. platformation.global