The ins and outs of august Augusta

Monday at Augusta could have been Bargain Day at K-Mart. The queue started at the front door, snaked around the wooden porch which encircles the forest-green building, stretched across the bounds of the tarmac, out through the pines, and on nearly to the boundary of the first fairway. This was, mind you, three days before the 2001 Masters tournament would even start, and these people weren't waiting in line for liquid refreshment, the public toilets, or even Tiger Woods' autograph.

Rather, having ponied up several hundred dollars for a $26 practice-day badge, they were now queueing to enter the merchandise shop so they could spend hundreds more. The members of the semi-orderly procession were prodded along their way into the building, quickly relieved of their money, and ushered out another door, bearing their new swag - logoed Masters caps, shirts, jumpers and jackets - in green-and-white Augusta National carrier bags.

You might suppose that the staid officials of Augusta National would be above such blatantly manipulative marketing ploys, but you'd be wrong.

The face value of a four-day badge for the Masters Tournament is laughably priced at $100. The same badge will fetch 50 times that on the street outside, more when it represents the centerpiece of one of those $10,000 corporate packages. In the midst of all this unseemly money-changing on Washington Road, it is conveniently overlooked that the original suppliers of most of these blackmarket badges are the Augusta National members themselves.

As a former Masters champion once put it: "They're whores for one week a year, and then they spend the other 51 weeks pretending they're not whores".

One cannot enter the grounds of Augusta National without feeling he has passed through a time warp of some sort. From the antebellum architecture and ambiance of the clubhouse to the stunning beauty of the spring magnolias and azaleas, the genteel and courtly charm of the hosts, the dignified deference of doting waiters and fawning clubhouse servants, the whole place is straight out of Gone With the Wind.

In January, 1933, the carefully-selected membership of an exclusive new golf club convened in Augusta. Following a lavish dinner at the Bon Air Hotel, Grantland Rice, the most celebrated sportswriter of his day and a charter member, rose to make a toast.

Prefacing his remarks by explaining that he had previously been a member of several nascent clubs, none of which had made it out of infancy, Rice opined that the other ventures had for the most part died from self-strangulation brought about by an overabundance of conflicting committees and meetings. Rice proposed a resolution that meetings should be dispensed with and that cofounders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts be authorised to operate the club at their discretion. His audience, well-fortified with bootleg corn whiskey, to a man shouted "Aye!"

Jones and Roberts are no longer with us, but 68 years later, the guiding principles at Augusta National remain essentially undisturbed: it remains a virtual fiefdom, answerable to no laws but its own. Its practices are every bit as shrouded in secrecy as those of a Klan chapter.

Publicly discussing club business is itself grounds for expulsion, but then an Augusta member is never expelled as such. He just doesn't get a bill for the following year.

There is no membership list and no published dues structure. Indeed, one does not apply to become a member at Augusta National at all. Rather, one waits to be invited. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, at the time the world's richest man, once made the mistake of inquiring about membership, and is as a result still cooling his heels.

Another wealthy self-made American, the founder of a national hamburger chain, reputedly asked about joining Augusta National. Initially rebuffed, he sent word back that if he were accepted for membership, "I'll build them a new clubhouse," thereby ensuring he would never get in.

A decade ago the Augusta membership recognised the potential threat posed by the furore at Shoal Creek. That Alabama country club, scheduled to play host to the 1990 US PGA, was forced to integrate, at risk of losing the tournament. Augusta National hastily recruited Ronald Townsend, its first (and only) black member, and in a radical departure from its traditional practices announced his nomination with great fanfare.

To this day, Ron Townsend's station during Masters week is the press centre, thereby ensuring that the media can't miss him in his green member's jacket, a daily reminder that the wheels of progress have turned.

In the absence of a published membership list, we have no idea how many Jewish or Catholic members Augusta National might have, but the probable answer is: not many.

Clifford Roberts' recorded views on the subject suggest that his disdain for the former faith bordered on anti-Semitism. As for the latter, we know this much: Roberts was childless by choice through two marriages, and left a substantial portion of his estate to Planned Parenthood.

Indeed, the story is told of a prospective nominee who had been warmly embraced by the membership, but who was ultimately blackballed by Roberts, who offered one simple (and unchallenged) justification for his veto:

Any man, said Roberts, "who is stupid enough to have five children isn't smart enough to belong to Augusta National".