Driving along Berckmans Road, a leafy stretch of colonial residences that forms the western boundary of Augusta National, we came upon a group of eight black inmates from the state prison trimming the grass verge on the public highway.
Supervised by an armed guard, large letters on their backs warning passers-by of their status as jailbirds, an exclusively African-American chain gang was sprucing up the approach road to a course with perhaps the most chequered racial history in the sport. In its own way, that cameo 10 days before the Masters appeared to capture perfectly what a curious place Augusta, Georgia, is.
For four days next week it will be the centre of the sports universe. TV cameras will beam sumptuous shots of loblolly pines and blushing azaleas around the world, each idyllic image from the tournament accompanied by over-romantic commentary about the perils of Amen Corner and the siren song of Rae’s Creek.
This year there won’t even be Martha Burk protesting about the exclusion of women members to impinge upon the beauty of the annual spring ritual, to detract from the gushing encomiums to this little slice of golfing heaven.
Of course nobody will mention that, down the street from fabled Magnolia Lane, Title Pawn does brisk business advancing cash to locals in return for the deeds of their cars. In a city where it is estimated that one in four children lives in abject poverty, pawnbrokers are as numerous as traffic lights. Why shouldn’t one set up shop across the street from the most exclusive club in golf?
The Masters may have made Augusta internationally famous but it certainly did little enough for its overall prosperity.
‘I’ve nothing against the tournament but I just wish the players would come out of the exclusive areas and spend a few hours one day talking to the deprived kids down here,†says the Reverend Larry Fryer, director of the New Hope community centre. ‘They’d see that there is another side to this town, a place where people are hurting bad, where families are going hungry every day.â€
The renting out of homes near the course for the duration of the tournament is such a cottage industry — top price is $25 000 for seven days — that Laurie Easterlin, a local librarian, published a self-help booklet entitled So You’re Renting Your House For The Tournament.
And though the club donates as much as $3-million a year to national and local charities, for most residents the golf has little impact on their daily lives apart from snarling up the traffic.
When the camera crews and visitors depart, Augusta remains just one more troubled city in the Deep South, struggling with a growing racial and economic divide. Half of the 200 000 who live there are black. Not one is a member of the most exclusive golf club in the world. When Augusta National finally deigned to let a black man — women of all races remain famously excluded — join its ranks in 1991, a television mogul from Washington DC was invited, not a local.
In January the city newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, began a 12-month series on race which it hopes will provoke the first serious and prolonged discussion of the issue. The project started with a survey in which more than two-thirds of respondents reckoned the city would never overcome its racism problems.
An outsider might ask how it possibly could when the most prominent statue in the depressed downtown is a huge monument to the Confederate dead from the Civil War?
‘No nation rose so white and fair, none fell so pure of crime,†reads the inscription.
Ironically that cenotaph is a short walk from James Brown Boulevard, a street named after Augusta’s most famous musical export and present owner of a local radio station. As a child, Brown stood on that same corner, shining shoes and rustling up business for his aunt, Handsome Honey Washington, who ran a nearby brothel.
When the Godfather of Soul was charged with domestic battery in January, Augusta quickly chose to rename the forthcoming James Brown Music Festival The Garden City Music Festival, but it is pressing on with plans to erect a bronze statue of him.
Some are aghast about that move, especially because at a meeting of the city commission only two weeks ago it was decided, only after some debate, against naming Augusta’s minor league baseball field after Ty Cobb, a long-time city resident, a legend in the sport and, in his heyday, a renowned purveyor of race hatred. That Cobb would even be considered for the honour sums up a lot of the difficulties facing this place.
‘I would like at some point for us to put aside the personal lives of people,†said commissioner Andy Cheek when he spoke in favour of remembering Cobb — among whose crimes was one particularly violent assault on a black woman. ‘At some point we need to recognise there are just as many black folks that don’t like white folks as there are white folks who don’t like black folks.â€
As recently as 2000 three black members of the Augusta Commission testified in Washington DC that their city remained ‘racially intolerantâ€. Despite the population dividing almost 50-50 along colour lines, it is barely three years since George Kolb became the first black person ever to hold the city’s top administrative job.
Predictably his tenure has been marked by repeated clashes with the white mayor, Bob Young, who was elected two years ago in a vote that saw him garner his support almost exclusively from the 37 predominantly white precincts in the city.
Tiger Woods, despite his patchy form, may be favoured to win the tournament. Vijay Singh may also figure in the shake-up. Much easier to predict, however, is that there will be a lot more black people working the kitchens at the Masters next week than walking the course on either side of the ropes. —