Augusta doesn’t deserve praise for overdue decision

Welcome to the 20th century, Augusta National Golf Club.

Never mind that we are well into the 21st century. Your move on Monday to finally admit women as members at the stately home of the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Ga., has not gone unrecognized.

But can we please hold the applause and skip the pats on the backs of those green jackets?

Hearty congratulations and high fives all around are not due here for getting around to opening up room to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore, a South Carolina financier, among its 300-something members.

Not when even the Saudi Arabian Olympic team, that spearhead of progressiveness and equality, beats you to it.

Augusta National finally did the right thing, but only after decades of dragging its FootJoys down the fairways.

After all, Saturday marked 92 years since the 19th amendment giving women the vote in this country was ratified. Of course, in Georgia it didn’t take effect until 1922. But that was still 10 years before Augusta National first opened its gates — time enough, you might have thought, to prepare the membership for the emerging concept of equal rights.

Thirteen years ago the club’s notorious spokesman, hardheaded Hootie Johnson, said it would admit a women “in due time.” Apparently Augusta National doesn’t rush to judgment, since reports have it that the candidacies of Rice and Moore have been under consideration for about five years.

So what has taken Augusta National so long to get around to Rice and Moore? Was it a matter of the two women dropping their handicaps? Or of Augusta National loosening its own handicaps of sexism and arrogance?

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised it has taken Augusta this long. Disappointed, to be sure. But not surprised. It took the folks there until 1975 — 28 years after Jackie Robinson’s major league debut — to allow an African-American to play in its tournament. Membership, however, was something else. That required an additional 15 years.

Sports has often been an instrument of change in society. But change at Augusta has been glacial because, well, the membership thought its money and privilege placed it above everyone and everything else.

And, to a sorry extent, it was right. Too many people who could have sped things up and done the right thing found it easier not to. The PGA Tour leadership, for one. Then, there’s Tiger Woods, a voice they would have listened to. But he never spoke above a whisper on the subject. Now if Augusta National had barred that Nike swoosh, well, you can bet Tiger would have been outraged.

In a statement Monday, Woods said, “I think the decision by the Augusta National membership is important to golf. The Club continues to demonstrate its commitment to impacting the game in positive ways.”

Let’s hold the applause for a while, though. Like Augusta National, we can wait 80 years.

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.