The golf courses of Britain have seldom appeared on the frontline of the fight for gender equality but the prospect of female model caddies has driven four clubs in the home counties to make a stand.
Eye Candy Caddies, a service that provides female models to escort golfers round the course, has been accused of “exploiting outmoded notions” about the game.
The company provides models that have been taught basic golf etiquette and dispatched to look beautiful beside clients as they hacked around the fairways.
For five years they have been seen on courses in the UK, Ireland and Spain: places where physical beauty is generally as rare as a hole in one.
Sarah Stacey, 43, a former model turned agency manager, who founded Eye Candy Caddies using models from her own roster, said she was offering the prospect of “glamourous golf”.
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Initially she offered male models too, but take up of that service was non-existent, so she has focused instead on providing the best-looking female caddies in Europe.
In her website’s directory, golfers requiring a good-looking caddy are encouraged to consider the relative merits of ‘Aimee’, who says she took the job to get a tan, ‘Gemma’, who is apparently desperate to marry a golfer, and ‘Kelly’, who likes to wear “cute” golf cardigans.
Alongside their qualifications for the fairway, prospective caddies are asked to name their favourite body parts. One appears in a minimal bikini to demonstrate her point.
Mrs Stacey said the service was meant “in the spirit of fun”, she said, perhaps unaware that golf is a game in which fun is at best a secondary consideration.
Leaderboard, which manages clubs in Kent, East Sussex, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, has now issued a condemnation of her service and banned her girls from its clubs.
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“Anyone who seriously cares about the development of the game should work to ensure that it is as professional, inclusive, and culturally inoffensive as any other major sport,” said a spokesman.
“Exploiting outmoded notions of golf as a male bastion is not ’just a bit of fun’ - it damages the reputation of the sport as a whole as well as its appeal to members of the younger generation of either sex.”
This stand for gender equality has surprised many regulars at their clubs. Golf is not a sport in which a level playing field is considered important: sloping courses, riddled with obstinate hazards, are often preferred.
“For the cash I spend at this place you’d think they’d let me pick my own golfing partner,” said one golfer, who did not wish to be named.
Abigale Burrows, 27, a model and part-time musician, became a golf caddie to earn money between jobs. She had considered golf to be a rather boring sport, but in her promotions work she has often been called upon to pursue strange and apparently self-defeating activities so she found it relatively easy to adapt to the game of golf.
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“I’ve dressed up as a giant rabbit,” she told The Times. “I’ve been a butler at a gay wedding, a Las Vegas Show girl at another event. Nothing surprises me any more. The money is good and I always enjoy the work.”
The work, apparently, involves following Mrs Stacey’s three golden rules for a successful caddying: “Turn up, shut up, keep up.”