The No. 1-ranked golf course in the country is set to welcome women to play with unlimited access on its turf for the first time in its 108 years of existence.
Members of Pine Valley, an exclusive men’s club in southern New Jersey, voted unanimously to remove gender-specific language from its bylaws, giving women the freedom for unrestricted play at any time. Currently, women are only allowed to play on the course on Sunday afternoons.
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“The future of golf must move toward inclusion, and I am pleased to report that the Trustees and members of the Pine Valley Golf Club have voted unanimously and with enthusiasm to remove all gender-specific language from our bylaws,” club president Jim Davis said in an emailed letter from April 30, obtained by golf magazine Golf Digest.
Davis added that the club will start recruiting women to become members and expects to have its first female recruits by the end of the year.
The move by Pine Valley follows other changes made by other men’s-only golf clubs in the past decade, including Masters host Augusta National, which accepted women into its club for the first time in 2012.
Currently, of the 3,670 private golf clubs in the United States, less than a dozen remain men’s only, the magazine reported.
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Davis wrote in the letter that the decision to allow women into Pine Valley was one he had been mulling “for a long time.” The club, about 20 miles from Philadelphia, has a secret list of 1,000 members and is believed to have included notable actors and former presidents.
Pine Valley did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
