April 10, 2003
Wind Deserts Martha's Sails
The wheels are coming off Martha Burk's bus down in Augusta. Here's the AP's Tim Dahlberg on Augusta Chairman Hootie Johnson's defiant press conference yesterday:
At Augusta National, the men apparently still like to get together with men. Maybe it's a southern thing, but there are other clubs around the country with similar membership policies.
If there was ever a timetable for admitting women, Johnson made it clear Wednesday there isn't one now.
Burk admitted as much when she said Johnson's position seemed to harden even more. At a time when she was hoping to celebrate success, Burk instead was facing the hard reality that this might be a fight she just can't win.
No, Johnson didn't come out and declare victory for the club. He doesn't need to.
Barring the unexpected on Saturday, though, it might be time for Burk to finally admit defeat.
When I first read that, I wasn't sure I agreed. But then I read this column by Roy S. Johnson over at SI.com:
Martha blew it. Plain and simple. She slammed a duck-hook off the 18th tee with the match all square. Missed a one-foot putt to win. Martha Burk commanded our attention for more than nine months leading up the grandest tournament in golf and, with one frivolous utterance, she lost us. Saturday, Burk will march and rail in Georgia, touting that the Augusta National Golf Club, host of the Masters, should drop its Neanderthal men-only policy and admit female members.
She's right. But frankly, I just don't have the fire to raise a fist and say, "Right on, girl!" Not anymore. Not after Burk's recent remarks, describing CBS' airing of the tournament as "an insult" to the female soldiers who are putting their lives on the line for freedom in Iraq. How wrong it is, she inferred with disdain, that these brave women will return home to a nation where they ... uh ... What Martha? Can't get into a stodgy old private country club?
Talk about an insult. Burk later claimed she was misunderstood and tried to recant. But no mulligans are allowed here. Her comment was an insult to generations of African-American solders who fought and died for their country at a time when they could not sit down and eat in public restaurants or use public restrooms or drink from a water fountain that wasn't located below a sign that read "colored." It was an insult to the black soldiers fighting in Iraq today who, when they come home, will stand a better chance of going to prison than to college.
Now that Burk isn't getting a free ride from the Left anymore, we can expect her Masters protest to die a quiet death offstage once the tournament is over.
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03:15 PM