At first glance, the history is clear. Only female golfers have played in the Saudi Arabian Ladies International Pro-Am. It has been staged by golf, but the sign outside the New Holland Golf and Country Club suggested that the players should be concerned for their safety. So polite was the question, I presume, that the questioner was serious.
“From a perception perspective it’s important, especially with the Middle East and the Middle East-Israel conflict — where it’s really not up to us right now,” Emily Pedersen said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Florida, where she and her professional partner, April Synder, were preparing for Thursday’s event. “It’s up to the world leaders and the military and the intelligence agencies and everything else. But the demand is there from everyone watching, not just my husband and my family. But it’s also important to me to show my children that if I have the opportunity to try something, that I will.
“That’s part of the motivation, to show them you never know what you can accomplish. You should never let your circumstances hold you back from doing your best.”
Nothing serious to risk
You can’t fault a girl for that.
She said she and Snyder were told not to putt on the green, where a bomb exploded in 2015.
The course was evacuated as a precaution, and a construction site was built around the hole and adjacent to the eighth tee. But Pedersen and Synder did play there.