Within 24 hours of being “outed” by a former lover in the early 1980s, Billie Jean King, the former Wimbledon champion, had lost all her commercial endorsements. Martina Navratilova, the greatest woman tennis player of all, “came out” of her own volition and estimates that it cost her about $12 million in lost sponsorship deals.

The commercial world, it would seem, was not ready openly to embrace gay sportsmen and women. And even today there are few male or female athletes prepared to reveal their sexual orientation. And why should they?

A world that is increasingly comfortable with gay actors, musicians and politicians is reticent when it comes to the sporting arena. Those who do come out invariably do so as their careers are winding down or have come to an end. Yet, starting today, the all-male bastion that is the Royal and Ancient clubhouse at St Andrews, the home of golf, will be used by women for the first time when the Old Course plays host to the Women’s British Open. And if anecdotal evidence is to be believed, 20 to 30 per cent of players using the facilities will be gay.

In 1995, Ben Wright, a commentator for CBS television in the United States, caused a stir with his assertion that lesbians hurt the image of women’s professional golf and that on the LPGA Tour lesbianism “is not reticent, it’s paraded”. Such comments cost him a job he had held for 23 years. The LPGA – once pejoratively referred to as the Lesbian Professional Golfers’ Association or, worse, “Dykes on Spikes” – has, though, kept a tight lid on matters. Soon after Wright made his comments, Muffin Spencer-Devlin, a veteran player in the US, announced that she was gay, as did Patty Sheehan and, a few years later, Rosie Jones. None, though, was in her sporting prime and few since have followed in their footsteps.

“By speaking out proudly about her personal life, she moves us closer to the day when no woman in sports needs fear media or sponsorship backlash to assertions, whether true or not, that she is a lesbian,” the eulogy in honour of Spencer-Devlin at a Women of Courage awards ceremony in 1996 on the eve of what is now the Kraft Nabisco Championship in Palm Springs, California, read.

It is here that up to 20,000 women gather every year for a week of partying in what has become known as the Lesbian Spring Break and many have latched on to the tournament. The championship’s organisers and television broadcasters remain coy about the make-up of a large proportion of the spectators. You will not see cameras lingering on the many groups of women walking hand in hand.

A census for Channel 4 television controversially suggested that most lesbians believe that they chose to be lesbian, or cite a combination of nature and nurture from social pressures. More men, on the other hand, believe that they were born gay, it said. If the nurture argument is given any credence, the peripatetic lifestyle may be cited as an influence. Constantly on the road, players live out of suitcases, moving from one city to the next, one hotel to the next. Like a travelling circus, it can be a lonely lifestyle not that conducive to meeting people from outside the sport.

Working on the cliché that sex sells, the LPGA is not above playing the glamour card with its heterosexual golfers. It has adopted a sexy slogan – These Girls Rock – and revels in the likes of Natalie Gulbis, whose swimwear calendars and reality TV show will have caught the imagination of a mainly male audience.

When Karrie Webb, the Australian, landed an eagle with an approach shot over water from 116 yards to win the Kraft Nabisico Championship in 2006, it was one of the great sporting moments, something that will be spoken about for years. Was Webb’s achievement diminished, however, by being gay? Not one iota. Was it embellished, then? Not a jot. This was sporting theatre provided by one of the game’s greats – a winner of seven major championships – and was a breathtaking moment that mere mortals can only dream about.

It is no longer lesbianism that affects the promotion of the sport in the wider world, but racism. The LPGA has experienced a huge influx of players from the Far East, and South Korea in particular, and not everybody is happy about it.

In a comment that echoed Wright, Jan Stephenson, the Australian golfer, said in 2003: “The Asians are killing our [LPGA] tour [through] their lack of emotion [and] their refusal to speak English when they can speak English.”

This year there are 45 Koreans playing on the LPGA Tour, most with parents in tow, and many of them are winners. So do not be surprised if an Asian player lifts the trophy on Sunday evening. It will just be a sign of the times in an ever-changing world.