Ban on women not a black and white issue

The eminent 20th Century American philosopher Julius Marx once famously said: "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." Less well known is the fact that Groucho was in fact a member at Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles, where he golfed badly, but reputedly hustled enough money at a twice-weekly bridge game to more than cover his annual dues.

His designs on a same-year Grand Slam dashed by a howling three-hour squall which swept in from the North Sea coincident with his tee time at Muirfield 12 days ago, Tiger Woods now finds himself at the maelstrom of another storm, one which probably won't disappear as quickly.

The issue of gender discrimination among golf clubs is more complicated than those who equate it with the racial practices of the past would lead us to believe, and that the current fuss was kicked up by Martha Burk, a 60-year-old woman who doesn't even play golf, won't do much to enhance the argument.

Woods, who is not only the game's most prominent figure but a dual-minority of both African-American and Asian heritage, has been roundly criticised for declining to criticise the male-only membership practices of Augusta National, which hosts the annual Masters Tournament.

Then, last month, it belatedly came to the attention of the Feminazis that most of the clubs on the British Open rotation (Muirfield, to name one, along with Royal St George's and Royal Troon, which will host the next two Open Championships, and, indeed, the Royal and Ancient itself) also have men-only membership policies. Look for the pickets from Washington to show up in Sandwich next July.

Since Burk's argument is largely based on the Shoal Creek precedent, a brief history lesson is probably in order.

The 1990 US PGA Championship had already been awarded to that Alabama club when its chairman and founder Hall Thompson (who also happened to be an Augusta National member) somewhat stupidly said in an interview with a Birmingham, Alabama, newspaper "we don't discriminate in any other area except for blacks", thereby forcing the US PGA's hand.

In short order, the organization adopted a policy denying tour events to any club practising such open racial discrimination - even though a generation earlier the PGA's own covenant limited membership to "professional golfers of the Caucasian race".

Shoal Creek's response was to waive its $35,000 initiation fee and accept the membership application of one Louis J Willie, a black businessman from Birmingham. Recognising the handwriting on the wall, Augusta National hastily admitted its own first black member, Ron Townsend.

During every Masters tournament since, Townsend, in his green jacket, has been conspicuously displayed, propped up like a cigar-store Indian somewhere in the vicinity of the media centre.

A dozen years later, Burk, who heads up a group called the National Council of Women's Organizations, which normally devotes itself to more worthy causes such as domestic violence, discovered that the Georgia club had no female members, and fired off a letter, since widely circulated, to club chairman Hootie Johnson.

"We know that Augusta National and the sponsors of the Masters do not want to be viewed as entities that tolerate discrimination against any group, including women," the letter stated. "We urge you to review your policies and practices in this regard and open your membership to women now, so that this is not an issue when the tournament is staged next year."

Hootie Johnson might seem at times obtuse, but he is perceptive enough to recognize an upraised bludgeon when he sees one.

He fired back a response, also widely circulated, in which he said, "we will not be bullied, threatened, or intimidated", and added that any changes at Augusta National "will not come at the point of a bayonet".

Exactly how Tiger Woods arrived at the epicentre of this mess is less clear. Suffice it to say that his refusal to involve himself in the internecine politics of golf clubs is hardly without precedent.

Although their golfing prominence more or less paralleled the Civil Rights explosion or the 1960s, neither Jack Nicklaus nor Arnold Palmer used their positions to effect change.

As late as 1994, for instance, Nicklaus offered the wrong-headed observation (one which would shortly be disproved with the arrival of the Age of the Tiger) that black athletes, so prominent in every other sport, had failed to dominate in golf because they had "different muscles that react in different ways".

That silly observation is not and was never true of blacks, but it might apply to lady golfers. (Although golf commentator Ben Wright got himself kicked off the air in part for suggesting that anatomy might have something to do with a feminine golf swing, it should be noted that the late Babe Didrickson Zaharias, arguably the greatest female athlete ever, once pointed to her own boobs and said "if I didn't have these things, there's no telling how far I might hit the ball!")

Burk, as we have noted earlier, doesn't play herself, and can thus be forgiven for equating men's golf to women's golf, but they are in fact two very different games. That's why God invented red tee markers.

There are no doubt hundreds of women with the wherewithal to pay the initiation fee and annual dues at Augusta National. There are hundreds of excellent women golfers who could handle Augusta National from the back tees. The number of women who could do both is probably very close to zero.

Besides, no woman golfer I know would even want to be an Augusta member.

Tiger's response to the debate - "It would be nice to see everyone have an equal chance to participate if they wanted to, but there's nothing you can do about it" - has been widely criticised as short-sighted, but then he never asked to become the poster boy for this issue.