Augusta becoming a bit of a Hoot

LockerRoom/Tom Humphries: Regardless of your position you have to take a step back sometimes and wonder what's going on inside his head. What possesses a man to belch such defiance in defence of what is essentially the indefensible, knowing ultimately he will lose, that probably he will bring the whole house down around him.

It's impossible to fathom his motivations but fascinating to watch the man. Hootie we salute you. On the eve of war there is no sideshow better than the battle between Martha Burk of the National Council of Women's Organisations and Mistah Hootie Johnson of Augusta National Golf Club. All the absurdities of the bigger picture are reduced to a squabble over access to a rich persons golf club.

You are familiar with the terrain by now. Hootie is head honcho of Augusta National Golf Club, home of the US Masters and the place which we sportswriters regard as hack heaven, a Nirvana where we might use words like "dogwood" and "azalea" without being deemed excessive. Having been prevailed upon a few years ago to permit the odd rich black guy to become a member of the club Hootie has had enough. No women.

Why women would want to breach the monastic tranquillity of such an antiquated sanctuary for grumpy old men is a moot point, but they do - on principle. It is deemed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the US Supreme Court might be the ideal compromise as first female member. Hootie is unmoved. She may be the right class of person but she has the wrong genitalia.

It all took another wonderful twist this week when a federal lawsuit was filed against the city of Augusta after Martha Burk's request to be allowed protest at the front gate of Augusta National Golf Club was turned down.

(Now it must be conceded Burk is something of a gallery herself. She is almost a Hooteramic match when it comes to public relations. She has gone on record as saying a large part of many male gatherings is the ritual denigration of women. I've been to some of these things. Mostly they are about the deification of Beckhams.)

Martha has led a campaign challenging Augusta National's men-only membership. People accuse her of being a publicity seeker but she can hardly have imagined when she wrote about the issue to Hootie Johnson last July that His Hootiness would go public with the letter and talk about the anguish these little ladies were causing him.

"We do not intend to become a trophy in their display case," quoth Hootigan. "There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours, and not at the point of a bayonet."

Now Marta and her group are planning to protest at the Masters. It's not a "Burn Your Pringle" sort of deal at all. For April 12th, the Saturday of this year's Masters, Burk's group applied last week for a one-day permit to allow 24 protesters at the club's front gate and 200 more protesters across Washington Road, which leads to the club.

Augusta is a small, mean kind of town though. If people in Shannon don't see beyond their job when it comes to the issue of global war well people in Augusta don't look beyond their annual earner. It was decided the protesters would be too great a distraction to the big cars whooshing through the gates. Something could go horribly wrong - a hook on the first tee, a wanton bogey. Big stuff.

So Burk "and others" were granted permission to protest on a 5.1-acre area a third of a mile from the club's entrance. What makes this so novel is not just the news the protest site is owned by Augusta National but the people with whom Martha Burk will have to share the site with: Rev Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition, Mr Todd Manzi of Tampa, Fla, who founded an anti-Martha Burk website, Grand Imperial Wizard John J Harper of Cordele, Ga., representing a splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan and another group calling themselves "People Against Ridiculous Protests", the Rev Jesse Peterson of the Brotherhood Organisation of the New Destiny, Bobby Price of the New Black Panthers Party, and radio talk-show host Bill Simonson of Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Klan will be there in support of The Hootmeister General and to protest against the existence and proximity of the Rev Jesse Jackson. Although he protests he is not in caHOOTS with them it has required quite a feat of manoeuvring by the Hootster to get the Klan to the gates, or a site near the gates, in defence of the rights of the membership.

"This equal rights stuff has gotten out of hand," noted Mr Harper, Imperial Wizard of the group, the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan this week "We're not concerned with whether they want us there or not. We're concerned with their right to choose."

So it's all set. As the US biffs the Iraqi people about the place in the name of freedom the key story on the domestic front will concern the right to protest about membership of a rich persons golf club. All shades of complexity can be discerned in the argument. Is it racist to expect Tiger Woods to lead the protest just because he is black? Will anything change if Hootalong relents and lets in one or two women of suitable status? Will male dingbats announce self importantly that sorry "but everyone has the right of association". As if that was the end of the argument.

What Hooterick has done has brought fundamental principles into conflict with each other. There is a right of association or a right of privacy but those matters rub up against the right of free access and equality. When America cries big old croc tears about the plight of Kurds it makes the case against a state having any interest in discrimination in the public realm. Augusta is less important but the same principle.

Augusta National cannot claim shelter as a small intimate association of like-minded people or as a club formed and gathered with an express purpose or idealogy which would be mitigated against if women joined. It's a golf club for rich farts.

There is no moral defence in the "right to association" and probably no legal defence either. There is no sporting defence. Augusta National betrays the spirit of sport, especially its own sport and the legacy of women like Babe Didrickson, Glenna Collett Marion Hollins (she founded Cypress Point, the California course near Pebble Beach that has been described as "the Sistine Chapel of golf"), Alexa Stirling Fraser, Vare Stirling.

Augusta and the Masters presents an image we should be embarrassed by. And it's all so pointless - this is a battle which Hootitania will eventually lose.

Funny thing is that they could have saved themselves some trouble if they had looked at the rule book of their hidebound counterparts at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews. Far more subtle. Why the R&A almost practises positive discrimination by comparison. No rule prevents women from applying for membership. A woman just needs a proposer and two seconders all of whom have known them and have been R&A members for five years. The club won't publish any list of its members which is tricky and after you submit your application 22 of those mysterious members will have to scribble in a book in the clubhouse the reasons why they think you would be an addition. The R&A doesn't get the troubles that Hootusta National gets.

Here's how subtle the R&A is. When Judy Bell finished being president of the US Golf Association, instead of offering her honorary membership, as the R&A had to every men's USGA president, they slipped her a diamond brooch.

There's talk to the effect if Augusta and its golf club don't get something sorted out by Masters time in a few weeks, well then the tournament may be disrupted by shrieking women protesting by wearing Burkas and running about like loons.

That would surely bring an ignominius end to Hootersteins career. Couldn't happen to a nicer Hoot.