Support women's sports and SHARE this story with your friends!

In order to express my feelings about female reporter Tara Sullivan being excluded from conducting player interviews at the 2011 Masters Tournament at Augusta National, I decided to make a top five list of my "favourite" things about Augusta National.

1. STILL no women members at Augusta. Is this 2011 or 1911? They are at least 100 years behind pace.
2. Augusta gave up on race discrimination in l990. In that year Alabama's Shoals Creek golf club was unable to host a PGA tournament because of that organization's rule that clubs hosting PGA events may not be racially segregated. Augusta did not want the same to occur. Maybe its time that the PGA requires that both men and women are allowed to play golf at the establishments where it hosts their tournaments. Maybe this would occur should the LPGA and PGA tour join forces, as this blog discussed earlier.
3. When even Tiger Woods (who clearly respects women) stated that it was his opinion that Augusta should admit women, Hootie Johnson, then chairmen of the club, stated "I won't tell Tiger how to play golf if he doesn't tell us how to run our private club." For all of Tiger's "transgressions" at least he had that one right.
4. You may ask yourself, why on earth would any woman want to join Augusta, especially after their open disdain towards women. Well, take a look at some of the clubs reported current or members: Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft; Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric; Pete Coors, former chairman and CEO of the Coors Brewing Company, current Chairman of MillerCoors; James D. Robinson III, former CEO of American Express; Harold Poling, former CEO of the Ford Motor Company; T. Boone Pickens, Jr., oil tycoon; Hugh L. McColl Jr., Former CEO of Bank of America. Clearly this golf club is more about playing golf. It is an excellent networking opportunity for the best and brightest in the business world. What if the next CEO of Bank of America was a woman? She certainly would not be making her connections at Augusta.
5. And of course, the icing on the cake: following the 2011 Masters tournament a security guard denied female reporter Tara Sullivan, a sports columnist with The Bergen Record (New Jersey) access to the designated locker room location for post-tournament interviews, even though the Masters tournament is supposed to be accessible by women and men. Masters media committee called it a "misunderstanding." Somehow I doubt that.

The current members of Augusta, listed above and in this report, continue to exclude women. The current sponsors of the Masters Tournament should be ashamed that they openly support an event hosted by a club that still excludes women, and that was openly racist until 1990. The PGA tour should be ashamed that they have put NO pressure on Augusta for their stance towards women being members at the club.

Until prominent members, sponsors or the PGA do something, things will never change at Augusta and "misunderstandings" like what happened to Tara Sullivan will continue to occur.

Support women's sports and SHARE this story with your friends!

• Golf
• Sports
• SportsPLUS
• OpEd
• Media/Marketing
• Sexism

View Original Post at womeninsportinternational.blogspot.com | View WISIBlog's Full Profile