When Garrick Higgo won the second PGA Tour event of his career he was striking a blow for the left-handers in the sport. He was the 18th ‘southpaw’ to win on that Tour, starting with Bob Charles in 1963, a year in which he became the first left-hander to win a Major.

Since then, Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, Mike Weir and Brian Harman have also won Majors, but they’re the exception to the rule in a sport where the number of left-handers doesn’t stack up with the overall population, of which about one in 10 people are left-handed.

While other sports, like tennis and cricket, have an ‘overachieving’ ratio of left-handers excelling at an elite level, in golf the global percentage of players at all levels is said to be around 6%, while on the PGA Tour there’s only a 5% representation.

The imbalance of left-handed golfers relating to the overall population seems easy to attribute – access to left-handed equipment. Simply put, it’s hard to walk into your local golf shop and purchase a set of left-handed golf clubs, let alone be custom-fitted or find your preferred brand on the shelf, especially when it comes to the higher end of the market.

Supply and demand is what retailers call it. Sure, walk in and say you’re left-handed, and could they order you a set of left-handed clubs from manufacturer x or y?

Tennis, cricket and baseball, where between 15 and 30% of the sport is represented by left-handers, don’t have that problem and the numbers reflect that, and they overachieve against the global population of 10%.

Which leads me down another path. If left-handed golf equipment makes it hard for left-handers to take up the sport, aren’t we neglecting a sizeable number of potential golfers when the sport’s rallying cry is to ‘grow the game’? You try to purchase a set of left-handed golf clubs for children wanting to take up the game for the first time.

Now, there’s a reason boxing had to wait until 1994 before it crowned its first world heavyweight southpaw (left-handed stance) champion, Michael Moorer. ‘Back in the day’, coaches would turn around left-handers and teach them to box right-handed. It was just easier, in a sport that uses mirror shadow-boxing and general techniques that favour orthodox (right-handed) fighters.

Times have changed, as have coaching techniques, and the reigning world heavyweight Oleksandr Usyk is southpaw, as is our world champion Kevin Lerena.

Golf, not so much, although the reason is more related to accessing left-handed equipment than coaching.

At least we can say that while golf doesn’t match up to the stats percentage of other sports in terms of producing left-handed champions, it isn’t like two other sports that discriminate against natural left-handers.

What am I talking about? Well, in hockey you can’t buy a left-handed stick – the flat sides all favour the right-hander – and in polo, it’s illegal to play the ball with the stick in your left hand. Other sports make it difficult for a left-hander to excel. If golf wants to tap a new audience, start with letting aspiring players know that left is also right.

Gary Lemke