Hootie and the Blowhards

This is the story of a feminist, a Southern liberal who has become one of the most mocked men in the United States, President George W Bush’s newly minted

secretary of the treasury, and how, among them, they are almost certainly going to transform one of the world’s most revered sporting institutions.

The institution is the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters tournament which, every April, provides a beautiful harbinger of springtime. It not only attracts the world’s best golfers but manages to get the azaleas and dogwood to bloom right on cue for the TV cameras.

Next spring promises to be very noisy. Unless the club backs down before the 2003 tournament over its refusal to admit women members, the event is going to be the target of big demonstrations. The protesters have little chance of penetrating Augusta’s well-guarded grounds, but the inner calm the place has traditionally radiated will be wrecked.

What began last May with a quiet letter from the feminist, Martha Burk, to the liberal, Hootie Johnson, has turned into a full-scale national row. And it shows no sign of ending until Johnson, chairman of the Augusta club, surrenders. The club faces a future as the constant target of the feminist movement or a humiliating climbdown. The betting now is that sooner or later a climbdown is inevitable.

The turning point may well have come this week with the announcement of railway executive John Snow as US treasury secretary. A couple of hours later, Snow — presumably on instructions from the White House — quietly quit the club.

Burk hailed this as a major victory. ‘It says that sexual discrimination has been elevated to the same level as racial discrimination, and that it will come under the same scrutiny. That’s a very important development for women,” she said.

It was recognition that what was once considered a perk for the top captains of US industry, analogous to the corporate jet and the trophy wife, was now turning into a liability. Snow is the second member to resign this month, following Thomas Wyman, the former chief executive of the CBS TV network, who described the club’s stand as ‘pig-headed” and said a quarter of the 300 members felt the same way.

However, Augusta National is such a secretive organisation that it is impossible to test the truth of his statement. Members who breach the club’s code have been known to suffer expulsion in exquisitely brutal fashion: their membership package for the following year just never arrives.

Membership itself was secret until September when the newspaper USA Today printed a full list, revealing that the average age was 71. The list included such luminaries as investment guru Warren Buffett. Annual fees are about $25 000.

Augusta’s members seem baffled by the controversy’s refusal to die. The answer may lie in the club’s own initial response, which is being cited by some PR experts as a classic way to turn a mild problem into a crisis.

After receiving Burk’s letter, Johnson, a hero to liberals in South Caro-lina for his role in racial integration there, stormed that the club would not be pressured ‘at the point of a bayonet”. The club promptly decreed that the 2003 tournament would be shown advert-free to prevent pressure being exerted through companies buying time in the TV coverage.

Johnson himself and his members looked like Southern throwbacks. Johnson said he objected only to being portrayed as ‘an old coot”.

Yet it seems certain that the club was moving forward, at its own pace. It is no ordinary club. Hardly any of its members live anywhere near Augusta, a scraggy Georgia town that has nothing else to commend it. There is no suggestion that the arrival of women would destroy some atmosphere of male bonding, cultivated over long port-and-cigar evenings. However, the club and its high-powered members are unaccustomed to receiving instructions.

Even the club’s official spokesman and the ‘crisis manager” brought in a few weeks ago have been instructed to abide by club traditions and not to indulge in what might be called normal PR. Both courteously declined to comment on Snow’s resignation or the controversy in general.

Burk, however, has been very accessible. As chairperson of the National Council of Women’s Organisations, she claims to represent seven million women, all of whom, she says, have been rock solid on this issue.

She has been criticised for elevating this triviality into a major issue. ‘We spend a lot of time working on welfare and pay equality,” she replied. ‘But we can’t get any coverage. Have you ever called to ask me about social security?” —