PUT up the barricades and put out the lights. Irish golf is under attack from a new wave of denim-wearing swingers and, shocking news, it looks as though they are gaining ground. The trouble is that the attack is now coming from within the golf community as well as from without. If things go much further, every golfer will be forced to go on a diet in order to look good in tightly-fitting jeans.

The latest skirmish in the fashion war has been lost just now at Courtown Golf Club, where they have decided that denim may be worn in the clubhouse but not, for now at least, on the golf course. For small mercies one must rejoice over a stiff brandy.

It seems that there was a demand for this latest move and that the day was lost when the defenders of history were asked to speak out on the fashion merits of the sundry slacks and trousers that make up the day-to-day scenery in Irish golf. An unfair and loaded question when one considers the age profile and typical body mass of the average Irish golfer.

Nobody, it seems, was quick-witted enough to point at the Size Zero debate going on in the fashion world, where starvation is a professional hazard, and bring the meeting to a halt by asking what would all of this mean for the catering department. Everyone knows that every Irish golf club is losing money on catering even as things stand and if a communal diet becomes necessary they may as well close down altogether.

I joke of course, but this latest fashion crisis has to be set into a global and historic context to appreciate the scale of the threat. Things have been sliding since the day in 1933 that Gloria Minoprio stepped out of a Rolls Royce to play in the British Ladies' Amateur Championship at Westward Ho using only one club, a straight-faced cleek, and wearing trousers.

What was most shocking about it is hard to say at this remove. Miss N Halsted, who had been kept waiting on the first tee only to be confronted by this apparition, was mesmerised by it all and very relieved to despatch her opponent on the 15th green.

The fact that a cleek wasn't the ideal weapon for escapes from the sea reeds and deep bunkers on a great links didn't stop Minoprio from drawing some blood.

The fact that she made similar appearances in subsequent championships . . . and even won one match using just a single club having improved her game greatly by beating thousands of balls into a net on the roof of her seventh floor Mayfair apartment off Jermyn Street . . . was nothing compared to the furore caused by her dress sense amongst the Ladies' Golf Union types. They had always favoured heavy tweed skirts hiding the knees and, until just a few decades earlier the ankle, except on the occasion of a strong follow through!

Men were seen to run from the clubhouse. Not to escape damnation but to get a good look at the tall, slim figure tightly clad in black. The British press went wild on the story and the great Henry Longhurst summarised it best of all . . . "Never in the history of women's golf has a competitor caused such a sensation as Miss Gloria Minoprio, who will go down to posterity with an immortality that is denied to kings and bishops, generals and statesmen, as 'the lady who played in trousers'."

The trousers worn by women golfers have got shorter and shorter over the years and it is now almost to the point of competing with tennis. Girls on the LPGA Tour like Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis have declared it as their dual mission to play great golf and show the spectators that lady golfers can look stylish. The results are astounding and make one wonder just what will happen next.

The LPGA, for its part, is happy to play along with the situation and its website coyly skirts the issue of proper dress for golf by stating it "does have a dress code. We allow sleeveless and collarless shirts to be worn during play. There is no specific length requirement on shorts or skirts. Denim, cut-offs, workout clothes are not allowed."

Ah ha. . . denims not allowed on the LPGA Tour. So, they can hardly come to Courtown then. Or can they? And would the men, like those at Westward Ho so many years ago, rush out of the clubhouse to have a look?

Confusing times for the oldtimers. But not without entertainment value.

And what of Minoprio? She went on to make her name as a magician of note, hence the publicity-seeking performances on the golf course, before she sadly died from septicaemia in the Bahamas in 1958 at the young age of just 50.

HOLE-IN-ONE
CLUB WINNERS
The winner of this week's hole-inone competition and the prize of a Ping collection polo shirt and a fourball in Druids Glen & a fourball in Druids Heath plus a lesson with resident PGA Pro is Finola McGarrity (handicap 13) who recorded her memorable shot on the 12th at WestmanstownGolf Course. This week's runners-up, who receise six golf balls, ball marker and pitch repair kit are:

Roger McLoughlin (15), 12th, Callan Sean O'Sullivan (18), 15th, Howth Susan O'Donovan (25) 9th, Berehaven Fr Pat Donnellan (14), 1st, Mountbellen Sonny Jackson (18) 1st, Monkstown Anna O'Donnellan (13) 9th, Galway Deirdre Foran (29) 2nd, Skerries Anne Harrington (32) 16th, Balbriggan