The venue for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics golf tournament is facing pressure to allow women to become full members after the city’s governor, Yuriko Koike, called on it to grant equal playing rights to all golfers.



Koike, who became Tokyo’s first female governor last summer, voiced anger that women were not eligible for full membership of Kasumigaseki Country Club, which will host the men’s and women’s golf tournaments in 2020.



“I feel very uncomfortable that women cannot become full members in this day and age,” she said. “It should be a venue open to everyone.”

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has reportedly expressed concern over the membership regulations and contacted the International Golf Federation to see if the club can be persuaded to grant female members the same rights as the men.

The club has 220 female golfers on its books, but they are not allowed to become full members or play on Sundays. Male members face no such restrictions.

Its general manager, Hiroshi Imaizumi, said the club was prepared to review its membership policy if asked to do so by the IOC or the golf federation. “I think we should keep up with the times,” Imaizumi told AFP.



But he added that the club’s management had been taken by surprise by Koike’s criticism since “we haven’t received any complaints from female members about the rules”.

It is not clear whether IOC officials were aware of the membership restrictions when they visited the club, located north-east of Tokyo, before it was chosen to host the Olympic golf competition.



The Japan Golf Council, a non-profit organisation launched last year with the aim of modernising the game, is lobbying to have the tournament moved from Kasumigaseki to Wakasu Golf Links, a public course near Tokyo Bay. Wakasu was initially proposed as the 2020 golf venue, but was replaced by Kasumigaseki in early 2013, several months before Tokyo was chosen to host the Games.

The council’s vice chair, Yutaka Morohoshi, said staging the golf competition at Kasumigaseki made no sense given its distance from Tokyo, and the availability of an alternative course that could be used by members of the public after the Olympics had ended.

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“The Olympics is all about legacy, but we won’t have that if the golf tournament is played at a private club,” Morohoshi told the Guardian. “The restrictions on women at Kasumigaseki are certainly a problem. It runs contrary to what the IOC stands for in spirit.”

The prospect of a sexism row – and potential demands that the golf competition be moved – would pose yet another headache for the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, which has only just resolved a dispute over the location of three other sports venues.

In response to Koike’s comments, the committee pointed out that the Kasumigaseki club had hosted major tournaments and “fully meets requirements for the Olympic-level golf competitions”.

The committee added, however, that it would “continue studying the club owner’s policy on the membership eligibility and responses to the public discussion”.

Kasumigaseki Country Club was founded in 1929 and has hosted more top-level tournaments than any other golf course in Japan, including the 1999 Japan Women’s Open.

Last year, Muirfield golf course near Edinburgh forfeited its right to hold the British Open after a ballot in May rejected the lifting of a ban on female members.

The number of votes in favour of allowing women to join fell just short of the two-thirds majority needed for the club to change its constitution.

Muirfield, which has retained a male-only membership policy since it was founded in 1744, said it would hold a second ballot after the result of the first vote provoked widespread condemnation.

Rio 2016 was the first time golf had been played at the Olympics since the 1904 Games in St Louis.

