AUGUSTA IN SHADOW OF GENDER WAR
THE sun burnt off the morning mist to reveal Augusta National in all its verdant glory, and the patrons began snaking their way downhill from the immaculate lawns in front of the clubhouse to the place of worship known as Amen Corner.
The course wasn’t quite ready for its closeup because a terrific overnight thunderstorm had left slices of it littered across the fairway. Dead leaves and pine straw interrupted the perfect lines. Men with rakes worked frantically on restoration. Augusta will be looking its best by tomorrow, they promised.
As long as nobody peers beneath the surface.
Several hours later Billy Payne, the chairman of Augusta National, chief executive of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games — the only edition not to be branded ‘the best Games ever’ by former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch — and an investment banker with New York-based Gleacher & Company, sat before the assembled media. He spoke proudly of this exquisite golf course, this proud club, its founders and their noble traditions. He praised the feats and remarkable narratives that had unfolded here. He then talked with concern about the diminishing number of young golfers. He expanded on Augusta’s great efforts to reverse this trend.
‘What ideas might attract kids and other groups of potential golfers to the game?’ asked Payne. ‘How can these ideas be integrated into the expansive and impressive efforts of the other golf organisations? The problems are so easy to identify. Golf is too hard; it takes too long to play; it’s not a team sport; it’s too expensive. The solution is more difficult. But we must try. Golf is too precious, too wonderful, to sit on the sidelines and watch decreasing participation. Whether we lead occasionally or follow always, it doesn’t matter; it only matters that we try.’
Hear, hear. But try what? Try how? Payne is chairman of an organisation that excludes 50 per cent of humanity on the grounds that they do not possess one vital piece of equipment. Put simply, you need wood to get into Augusta, but not the kind you take on the tee. No women are allowed. The argument around this issue has raged for a decade now, but is live again since Virginia Rometty took over as chief executive officer of IBM, one of the Masters’ main sponsors. Previous CEOS have been offered membership of this exclusive club. Then again, previous CEOS have been men.
Quite how Payne thought he was going to pull off preaching inclusion and practising exclusion, who knows? The press call was two questions old when somebody dropped the W-bomb. It went down much like the falling tree that reduced an outhouse by the 16th tee to splinters on Tuesday night.
‘ Well, as has been the case whenever that question is asked, all issues of membership are now and have been historically subject to the private deliberations of the members,’ said Payne. ‘ That statement remains accurate and remains my statement.’
It was tried again. ‘Is it possible to elaborate further on why membership for Mrs Rometty wouldn’t be considered?’
Payne replied: ‘I guess two reasons. One, we don’t talk about our private deliberations; two, we especially don’t talk about it when a named candidate is a part of the question.’ The game of golf seemed to get smaller by the minute.
‘ Mr Chairman, I note your concerns about the growth of golf around the world, and I also note that Augusta National is a very famous golf club. Don’t you think it would send a wonderful message to young girls if they knew that one day they could join this club?’ Payne: ‘That deals with a membership issue, and I’m not going to answer it.’ ‘No, it doesn’t.’ At which point, it became open season.
‘It seems like a mixed message. You’re throwing a lot of money into growing the game, and yet there’s still a perception that certain people are excluded.’
Payne: ‘That is a membership issue that I’m not going to — thank you for your…’
‘It sends…’ Payne: ‘Thank you.’ ‘It sends a wonderful message to girls around the world that they could join this emblematic golf club. It’s not a membership question.’
Payne: ‘ Thank you for your question, sir.’
A female voice seized the ball and ran. ‘Mr Chairman, as a grandfather, what would you say to your granddaughters? How would you explain leading a club that does not include female membership?’
Payne: ‘I think that’s a question that deals with membership and…’
The questioner interjected: ‘It’s a kitchen-table, personal question.’
Payne: ‘Well, my conversations with my granddaughters are also personal.’
‘Well, what would you suggest I tell my daughters?’ echoed a male colleague.
Payne: ‘I don’t know your daughters.’
To which the best reply would have been ‘And you’re never going to if you won’t let them join your stuck-up golf club, mate’, but sadly the interrogation persisted with a more reasoned approach.
‘About how this is the most prestigious golf club in the country, but they are not…’
‘I have no advice for you there, sir,’ said Payne.
As society continues to evolve so Augusta’s position grows increasingly indefensible. One day the years of male-only memberships will appear as incongruous as the Caucasians-
only rule that existed in the US PGA prior to 1963.
‘As long as I’m alive,’ said Clifford Roberts, a founder of Augusta National in 1933 and Masters chairman from 1934 to 1976, ‘ all the golfers will be white and all the caddies will be black.’
It is testament to the faultless beauty of Augusta, the time and effort that goes into its vision of aesthetic flawlessness, that this past is so easily forgotten. And it is a gorgeous place, a truly captivating environment and one of the greatest arenas for sport.
Yet this splendour also has the capacity to bewitch. There is good reason why the sports editor of one national newspaper allows his Masters correspondents a single mention of azaleas all week, and strikes completely any use of the adjective ‘ manicured’. Without self- control reports from here could quickly become hackneyed celebrations of horticulture and southern charm.
Players are not subject to such editorial control, however, and continue to talk of Augusta traditions as if all were admirable, when on the margins sit men like Pete Brown and Charlie Sifford, black pioneers on the PGA tour who never got to play in a tournament that should have been their destiny.
‘Before I won [the 1964 Waco Turner Open in Oklahoma] they were taking tournament winners,’ Brown recalled. ‘Once I won they changed the rules. They had a kind of points system like they do now in the Fedex Cup. Also, if you played good the former champions could invite you; but the Masters sent out a list for them to vote. If your name wasn’t on that list, you couldn’t play anyway.’
No doubt, players could have done more in Brown’s day, just as they have the power to influence male membership issues now. Asked about it earlier this week, however, Lee Westwood preferred to hide behind jokes.
They all want that Masters invitation to continue dropping through the letterbox. Rory Mcilroy spoke of the honour he felt on opening this one particular piece of mail, despite his trauma on the 10th last year. Westwood described the particular appeal. ‘Every putt you approach here is a new challenge,’ he explained. ‘Every single one.’
A recent survey by Golf World magazine made Augusta National the professionals’ favourite. ‘It makes you feel uncomfortable, but in a good way,’ said one.
Increasingly, though, not everybody finds agreement with the second clause of that rather personal statement.