On Thursday morning the golfing world will be abuzz with excitement over the year's first major tournament, and the writers covering the event will have dozens of storylines to pursue. Consider:
• Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, and Tiger Woods (the Big Four) will be teeing it up in the same tournament for only the second time this season.
• Tiger will be aiming for his fourth green jacket, but more importantly he'll be looking to remind us that he's still the best player we've ever seen.
• Meanwhile, the best player we didn't see in his prime, Jack Nicklaus, will be playing in what could be his final Masters.
And those are just the obvious stories. While I might choose to write from one or more of those angles later on, one thing I will not do is watch a single minute of the televised coverage, which follows a promise I made two years ago.
It's quite simple. I won't watch a single moment of the Masters until the hosting club, August National, admits a female member. To my way of thinking, if a club chooses to exclude members based on gender, it's really no different from excluding members based on race. While most people would probably agree that all-white clubs should go the way of segregated lunch counters, gender discrimination -- especially in the male-dominated sporting world -- is accepted. Martha Burk, for example, is portrayed as an extremist instead of an activist.
I realize that our nation's Constitution rightly gives clubs the right to fill their membership in any way they see fit, but that doesn't mean that the PGA needs to condone what's going at Augusta. They could strike a big blow for women's rights if they simply asked Augusta National to begin accepting female members, but I don't expect that will ever happen.
The other thing that could happen, of course, would be for one of the top players to boycott the event. The name most often mentioned in this scenario is Tiger Woods. The logic goes like this: Tiger is a minority, he has spoken out on minority issues a few times in the past, so he should take a stand here as well.
This is a load of crap. If there's a problem here, if we can agree that the PGA of AMERICA should not be playing one of its most important tournaments on a course which essentially excludes half of America, shouldn't everybody be saying something? Shouldn't Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els and Rocco Mediate and Paul Goydos all be equally obligated to take a stand?
And so while millions of golf fans are watching the best golfers in the world make their way around a course with trucked-in azaleas, piped-in bird chirping, artificially colored lakes, and manufactured tradition, I'll be looking forward to the U.S. Open. Won't you join me?
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