Despite the LPGA conducting an ongoing review of its gender policy and promising results to be made available soon, possibly even by the end of the year, pressure is mounting on the LPGA to change eligibility laws to exclude transgender women from competing against naturally-born females.
Professional golfer Olivia Schmidt is the latest to add her voice to the chorus and she has urged the LPGA to amend the policy to “protect female players”.
Transgender golfer Hailey Davidson made headlines earlier in the year with success on the mini-tour circuit, thrusting the topic of gender eligibility into mainstream media.
She was subsequently excluded when the NXXT Tour – the Florida-based mini tour on which she was a three-time winner – ruled that eligible golfers must the born female, but then came within a shot of qualifying for the U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania.
Then, after entering LPGA Q-School, 275 female golfers signed a letter calling on the LPGA (along with the Independent Women’s Forum and the USGA – to withdraw Davidson from the competition.
“We all know there can be no equal athletic opportunity for women without a separate female golf category,” the letter read.
“Yet, the Ladies Professional Golf Association continues to propagate a policy that allows male athletes to qualify, compete and win in women’s golf, even as several national and international governing bodies of sport and state legislatures increasingly reject these unjust and inequitable policies that harm female athletes.”
Schmidt played alongside Davidson at Q-School, though both missed out on Final Stage Qualification but earned Epson Tour status for 2025.
A lawsuit filed by a transgender woman back in 2010 prompted the LPGA to remove the prior requirement that players be “female at birth”, but Schmidt is calling for that to be reversed in an IWF video titled: “Time: Keep Women’s Golf Female.”
“We need the LPGA to make a change,” Schmidt said. “The bottom line is we can fight this all we want, but the true change comes from the LPGA. They are the only ones with the power to stop it. It’s up to them to protect us.
“I think that when you have a big organisation that only protects one person compared to 400 or so others, that says a lot about who they are and how they handle themselves. They’re protecting the few, not the many.
“I’m just praying that [the policy] gets changed, and I’m praying that we can find a way to kind of find some common ground in that and hopefully for the next generation of golfers. All I can hope is that I had a part in that and a part in history in this way.”
It’s not an ‘anti-trans’ agenda, Schmidt claims, instead suggesting that protecting women’s place in sport is the motive.
“In reality, we are just pro-women,” she added. “This movement isn’t about excluding people, but rather including women and keeping women’s golf female.”
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