Stuart McKinnon, the owner of the women’s NXXT Golf Tour, detailed why he supports banning transgender players in women’s pro golf.
In March, the tour updated its policy to ban transgender women from playing just as trans golfer Hailey Davidson was chewing through opponents on the way toward earning an LGPGA pro card.
At the time, McKinnon put out a statement explaining, “Our revised policy is a reflection of our unwavering commitment to celebrating and protecting the achievements and opportunities of female athletes. Protected categories are a fundamental aspect of sports at all levels, and it is essential for our Tour to uphold these categories for biological females, ensuring a level playing field.”
Davidson immediately took to social media to rail against the tour’s decision, which effectively ended his chances of earning a spot in the LPGA. And those hopes really collapsed this week when the LPGA itself followed the NXXT and put a ban on transgender players who “transitioned” before puberty.
Now, in an X-Spaces discussion on Thursday with the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, McKinnon is explaining his reasoning for updating the NXXT Tour’s gender inclusion policy, according to Fox News.
McKinnon noted that when he took over as head of NXXT, he was told that Davidson satisfied all of the rules for inclusion and that he had supplied a letter stating that the LPGA had qualified him to play in women’s golf. However, McKinnon says that he updated the gender policy because he wanted to create opportunities for women.
“I’m trying to help these ladies, and I didn’t want to break the rules with the LPGA because, ultimately, I was afraid,” McKinnon explained. But after personally watching Davidson perform, he knew that something had to change.
“As a father of five daughters, I’m here to protect my daughters and protect females, and I can tell you, like, I’m the type of father if I was watching my daughter playing soccer and there was a male that was playing against her, and he was 240 lbs, barreling down the field, I would have gone on the field, and I would have stopped it,” he said of his thoughts on Davidson’s participation.
“It’s something that can cause, in certain sports, physical damage to a player. In this case, it’s not the case in golf, but we clearly felt there was an advantage for Hailey Davidson.”
McKinnon went on to say that Davidson has not been completely truthful about his advantages over his female opponents.
“Hailey would spew off some things on social media, ‘I only hit it 255′ or whatever the number is, and I can unequivocally tell you that that’s incorrect,” McKinnon insisted. “Our team was behind Hailey, I could say, I was told once, dead into the wind, 25 an hour and clocked at 269 [mph]. So it’s not 255.”
The tour owner added that he consulted with scientists and experts on transgenderism and also sent out an anonymous poll to ask players what they felt about the transgender issue. He noted that the poll was anonymous to prevent any particular player from being “canceled” by activists. But he said the poll was “overwhelmingly” against allowing trans players.
He also noted that he understood that he and his family might face a backlash.
“I sat down with my family, I sat down with all of my daughters and said ‘We’re in this together or not. We potentially will get a lot of backlash, a lot of hatred, people will be against us for this,’ and we decided we needed to do what we felt was the right thing, and we did it.,” McKinnon exclaimed.
McKinnon also appreciated that the LPGA has stepped up with its new gender inclusion policy. Still, he predicted that women’s golf might start losing sponsors over the decision to ban trans layers.
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