Hailey Davidson’s bid to grow to be the primary male-born participant to earn a spot on the highest U.S. girls’s golf tour fell quick, however the golfer’s odyssey isn’t over.
The 29-year-old Davidson, who started transitioning from male to feminine in 2015, missed the lower final weekend with rounds of 70-76-73 on the Girls Skilled Golf Affiliation qualifying occasion, often called Q-College, on the Mission Hills Nation Membership in Rancho Mirage, California.
The scores imply that Davidson received’t advance to Stage II to compete for an LPGA tour card. Below the foundations, nonetheless, any golfer who information three rounds of 88 or decrease earns standing on the 2023 Epson Tour, the LPGA’s qualifying circuit.
In 2010, the LPGA voted to finish its coverage requiring members to be “feminine at delivery,” increasing eligibility to transgender athletes who full gender-reassignment surgical procedure.
The Scottish-born Davidson, who lives in Florida, has not commented publicly on whether or not the long run contains the Epson Tour, however did take a swing at a outstanding critic who accused the golfer of unfairly competing in opposition to feminine athletes.
It began when Judy Murray, a tennis coach and the mom of British tennis nice Andy Murray, responded Saturday to Davidson’s participation by tweeting: “No. Not honest in any respect. Defend girls’s sport. Take heed to the information, the scientists and the medics. That is fallacious.”
Davidson’s mom Sandra Davidson blasted Murray, telling the Each day Document: “Disgrace on Judy Murray for attacking one other mom’s baby.”
“You have no idea my daughter Hailey and most significantly you understand completely nothing about transgender males or girls and subsequently haven’t any rights in any way to present your opinion on one thing you understand nothing about,” Sandra Davidson mentioned. “Until you’re a mum or dad of a transgender baby I counsel you retain your opinions to your self.”
Judy Murray hasn’t ‘attacked one other mom’s baby’ – she has, rightly, criticised the inclusion of a male in girls’s sport.
Mum of Scottish transgender golfer Hailey Davidson condemns critics https://t.co/33L6lvmNbM through https://t.co/EswjQLGqq2
— Anne Craig (@annejcraig) August 23, 2022
Davidson responded on an Instagram story with: “You inform her mother!!!”
Davidson performed NCAA Division II males’s golf at Wilmington School, then transferred to play on the lads’s crew at Division III Christopher Newport College.
In 2015, Davidson started present process gender-transition hormone therapies. In January 2021, Davidson underwent six-hour gender-reassignment surgical procedure.
Below the LPGA gender coverage, those that are “transitioned feminine athletes” might compete by declaring that their gender identification is feminine; by finishing at the least a yr of hormone remedy, and by present process “gender reassignment surgical procedure (i.e., a gonadectomy).”
The Unbiased Girls’s Discussion board slammed the LPGA coverage, tweeting: “We should defend #WomensSports. Permitting organic males to steal spots from feminine athletes in competitions just like the LPGA is devastating to ALL girls.”
Davidson grew to become the second transgender golfer to earn Epson Tour standing.
In 2013, 63-year-old doctor Bobbi Lancaster certified for the tour, “however finally spent her time touring the nation as a human rights advocate,” Golfweek reported.
In Could 2021, Davidson notched a one-stroke victory at a Nationwide Girls’s Golf Affiliation event, turning into what’s believed to be the primary transgender participant to win a U.S. girls’s skilled golf occasion.
“I suppose that’s what frustrates me essentially the most,” Davidson instructed Golfweek final yr. “If I play dangerous, then individuals will really feel justified – ‘Oh effectively, she performed dangerous and wasn’t ok.’ If I do something good, it received’t be due to the truth that I put my entire life into this … it will be as a result of I’m trans.”
