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Sunday, May 7, 2006
Payne must act at Augusta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
A few years ago, Martha Burk asked Augusta National to start admitting women members, and Hootie Johnson reacted with the finesse of an eight-year-old with a pirate hat and a plastic sword, standing guard over his tree house.
Johnson said he wouldn’t change anything “at the point of a bayonet.” Or, to put it another way, “You can have your voting rights when you pry them from my cold dead hands. Until then, go make me a sandwich.”
On Friday, Johnson announce he would retire as chief of Augusta National. (I’m going to assume it’s just coincidence he stepped down the same day as the director of the CIA because, for one thing, Porter Goss may have actually seen the point of a bayonet.)
There is an opening for Hootie at Fernbank, adjacent to the T-Rex exhibit. Whether Augusta National remains stuck in a time warp now is entirely up to Billy Payne.
Payne oversaw the 1996 Olympics. He presided over the greatest global example of people coming together for an event, regardless of race, nationality, religion, politics, economics or gender. Now he presides over one of the world’s most famous backyards with its equally infamous exclusionary policies.
Payne had to bring people together for Atlanta to win the Olympic bid. But he discovered just how divisive an issue this was when he failed to get golf approved as an Olympic sport in ‘96, largely because it was going to be held at Augusta National. If he hasn’t learned the lesson, he’ll prove to be merely a younger dinosaur.
Augusta National is a club and the Masters is a tournament. But the two can’t be separated. To support the tournament is to support the club. The club is private but it hosts the most public of events, with professional golfers on network television. It’s not a tree house.
The club has progressed from a time when Clifford Roberts wouldn’t allow an African American on the premises for any purpose other than caddying or dishwashing. It allows women to play the course. Progress, even if at a comatose snail’s pace.
Augusta is steeped in tradition. Allowing women members would not eat into that tradition at all, any more than allowing blacks did. It would be one more reason to celebrate the club and its tournament.
The issue went from screaming headlines a few years ago to non-existent at this year’s Masters. But the fact the story — somewhat like Burk — went underground shouldn’t fool anybody. It will resurface, because matters involving discrimination always do. Payne knows that. He’s too smart not to.
Unlike Burk and Johnson, Payne knows something about finesse. Burk started out with good intentions in 2002, but by 2003 had veered off course. She was doomed when she started drawing parallels between Augusta National’s policies, and patriotism and women in the military. She teamed with Jesse Jackson, whose aide, Charles Farrell, uttered these forgettable words: “We find it morally offensive at a time when Saddam Hussein is gender-eligible to be a member of Augusta, yet the woman who is an Iraqi POW is not.”
Let’s try to stay on point, shall we?
The NFL would not hold its Super Bowl at a stadium that was operated by a club with exclusionary policies. The difference here is that players like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have a hammer but won’t use it. You just don’t boycott the Masters. It’s too important to your season and your bank account.
It’s news just to get a player to say, “The fairways are too narrow.” When asked before this year’s Masters what he would say if Johnson asked if him about the course, Woods smiled and said, “I want to be invited back.”
“Players walk in eggshells,” at Augusta National, David Toms said.
Payne can affect change. Ten years ago, the Olympics in Atlanta were punctuated by outstanding performances by women athletes: the soccer team, the softball team, gymnasts, swimmers and track stars.
There was a time when the Olympics were for men only. That tradition died in 1900. Wilma Rudolph, Peggy Flemming and Mary Lou Retton haven’t seemed to hurt the Games.
Here we are in 2006.
Now that he has a new office in Augusta, Payne might want to spread that around.
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