Hootie's choice

When is the right time to admit a woman to Augusta?

I have the feeling that the furor about admitting a woman to Augusta National Golf Club is not really so much about women. It's mostly about tradition, which is so very much more important in the South, and about the South's pique that the North is always telling it how to run its business. This issue of club rights is just states rights on a smaller level at a later time. This is not so much men vs. women as good ol' corporate boys vs. damn overbearing Yankees.

Augusta National does possess a national membership, and certainly the Masters is a national -- international -- event, but it is also true that in an American sports world which has always been managed from the North, by Yankees, the Masters became the one Southern sports championship that mattered ... to Yankees. By now, of course, NASCAR has also conquered much of the United States of athletics, but, still, when it comes to prestige, the Masters remains the supreme Dixie sports jewel.

And, oh Lord, has Augusta always done things its own way. The PGA marches -- gingerly -- to its drummer. It runs TV like nobody else in sport. It throws out announcers who dare say -- literally -- a single word the powers-that-be disapprove of. For years, the club forced golfers to leave their own caddies behind and hire Augusta's. And, of course, heaven and earth had to move before a black man could play in the Masters.

Augusta National is obsessive about appearance, right down to those dreadful green jackets. The place is gorgeous, pristine, efficient and ... a dictatorship. I call it "the American Singapore."

It is illuminating that Hootie Johnson, the club chairman -- who stands before encroaching links womanhood like Horatio at the bridge, brandishing a one-iron -- has a personal reputation for helping women. Just don't tell him to be fair to women. Don't tell him that Augusta National has to behave differently than the typical little local Hill 'n' Dale Country Club, where the biggest championship is the annual best-ball foursome and not even anybody from the next county over has ever had a beer on the19th hole. Don't tell him. Hootie is the exemplar of that phrase, "old times there are not forgotten" -- especially when The New York Times and all the other busybody liberals are telling him how to behave.

Unfortunately for Hootie and the club, Augusta can't win, because even if membership to a golf club is not a meaningful issue to many people -- men or women -- if the club holds out, the Masters itself will become the battlefield. Next April, the dispute, not the tournament, will dominate the news. Players will be unmercifully harassed to take a stand. There will be protesters out in force, including women in Masters-green burkas. Somebody will try to disrupt play. And this will happen every April until a woman is admitted to the club. It may not be fair to the golfers, but as might makes right, so, in the modern world, does hype make might.

Hootie Johnson is standing on principle, but at some point -- and it might as well be Thanksgiving, because it will only get worse the longer the dispute lasts -- he is going to have to choose between his principles and the Masters' success. That's the reality. That's Hootie's choice.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available now at bookstores everywhere.

 

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