Iona Stephen On How To Grow The Women's Game

Iona Stephen says she thinks the women’s game can achieve financial parity with the men’s game within a decade.

The pro-turned-Sky Sports Golf commentator told Golf Monthly's Mark Townsend: “I do believe that in the next five years, if I’m being bold, or 10 if I’m being realistic, we will see that The Open and the Women’s Open will provide an equal prize fund for men and women.” 

While prize purses are increasing in the women’s game – not least the $7.3m on offer in this year’s AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield, compared to $5.8m the year before – the available money still lags significantly behind the men’s game, but Stephen said that could all change if the game is presented in a way that is compelling to TV viewers, and cited women’s tennis as the benchmark.

She said: “The women’s side of the game has enormously engaging narratives and characters. You can watch documentaries on Netflix about tennis – Naomi Osaka and the Williams sisters. We should be able to learn more about the likes of the Korda sisters. There is a responsibility with every woman involved in golf, both from the broadcast and from the playing side, that this is the product that we have to sell to viewers. Ultimately it is about demand. You have to have people wanting to turn the TV on to watch women’s golf.

“I have often thought about the opportunity that sits there right now for a smart media group or someone to step in and just own that space. On Netflix there is the Formula 1: Drive to Survive and I think there is so much more to be told about the female players. If you look at the rivalry between Jin Young Ko and Nelly Korda and how the [2021] Player of the Year came down to the final round of the final tournament, again echoing the Formula 1 season, it was incredible.”  

One idea Stephen doesn’t see merit in is women and men competing on each other’s tours. However, she admits that the women’s game could learn some lessons from the men’s tours on how to market itself. She said: “I don’t think a woman playing on the men’s tour, or a man playing on the women’s tour, is the answer. I think the PGA and the DP World Tours do a good job in selling the rhetoric and the narrative of the characters that exist within the game, and I think that the women’s game could learn from that. The PGA Tour is now incentivising the social media presence of its own players [via the Player Impact Programme].”

Nevertheless, she is convinced that more tournaments along the lines of the DP World Tour’s Scandinavian Mixed could help raise the profile of the women’s game. She said: “Both the girls and the boys love competing together and they are playing for the same prize pot. It would be great to see more of those events in the future.”

Ultimately, though, Stephen sees the growth of the women’s game as the responsibility of everyone in golf. She said: “The men are spoilt for choice when it comes to tournaments and the men who played in Sweden deserve a pat on the back, because it is up to everyone in the golf community to support, promote and encourage the women’s side of the pro game.”