Trangender athletes have been banned from the NXXT Golf Tour, a women’s pro tour league, and the head of the league is standing up for the decision he made.
Recently, CEO Stuart McKinnon received a lot of backlash over the decision he made to ban all transgender athletes from competing. He defended that decision, though, saying it was all about ensuring that female athletes have a right to “competitive fairness” while they’re playing.
The fiercest criticism of the decision came from Hailey Davidson, a transgender golfer who won January’s NXXT Women’s Classic. Now, she won’t be able to compete on the tour again, as all biological males will be barred from competing.
In explaining his decision to bar transgender athletes from the tour, McKinnon told “Fox & Friends Weekend:”
“We didn’t make this decision lightly. We knew it was a polarizing topic and would evoke a lot of emotions from people out there. We took a lot of time in educating ourselves, spoke to many stakeholders in the golfing community and the sporting community at large from coaches and players and doctors and scientists, and educated ourselves.
“It really came down to one principle, and that was about competitive fairness. We felt that the biological male had a physiological advantage against the woman on the tour, and we made the decision to change.”
After the decision was made, Davidson took to Instagram to blast the ban. She wrote that it’s a “slap in the face to ALL female athletes … You think your (sic) attacking me but your (sic) actually attacking and putting doen (sic) ALL other female athletes.”
The decision was ironically — or, perhaps, purposely — made on International Women’s Day last Friday. McKinnon said it was made after multiple players were consulted to get their input.
The “overwhelming feedback” the league received, he said, was that the female athletes on the tour preferred to only compete against other biological women.
He continued:
“I’m a father of five daughters. Growing up in the sports, there was categories … and some is based on sex, and so this is really about protecting that category. In addition, we listened to the players on the tour. We conducted an anonymous player pool, and overwhelming feedback came back that they wanted us to change our gender policy guidelines.
“When Hailey Davidson did win, what it did was it brought out more feedback from our players on tour, telling us that they would not play anymore and telling us that other players that they knew of weren’t playing on the tour because of our gender policy guidelines.”
The organization later put out a statement that they formulated its new gender policies “in alignment” with the ones that are used by both the USGA and the LPGA. They said that it was “crucial” to do this to maintain the “integrity” of the partnership it has with the LPGA in “ensuring a fair and consistent competitive environment.”
