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LPGA pros pleased with Muirfield members’ vote

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PHOENIX – LPGA pros were pleased with Tuesday’s news that Muirfield voted to allow female members for the first time in the 273-year history of the Scottish golf club.

“It’s a great thing, probably a little inevitable,” Stacy Lewis said. “But it’s great the members decided to change their minds.”

Lewis is among 144 women teeing it up at the Bank of Hope Founders Cup this week, the first LPGA event on American soil this year.

According to the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which owns Muirfield, 621 members voted, with 80.2 percent voting in favor of admitting women.

“That’s awesome news,” Paula Creamer said. “It’s 2017. It’s time to step up.”

Muirfield was removed from The Open rotation last May, after members voted against a proposal to admit women, but the R&A announced shortly after the second vote’s passage that the club will return to the rotation.

“It was just a matter of time before they turned that [all-male policy] around,” Suzann Pettersen said. “It’s a good thing. I just find it weird it’s still an issue in 2017.

“I don’t know if it was the R&A pushing them, of if they just came to common sense themselves, but it’s the right thing to do.”