THE PROBLEM with letting women into your golf club, of course, is that invariably it leads to baby-changing tables in the locker rooms and blush wine with the pulled-pork barbecue and members yakking about window treatments instead of about stiffing a 4-iron from 200 yards.
Hootie Johnson, the chairman of the all-male Augusta National Golf Club, understands all this.
So when the Masters golf tournament begins today, Hootie and the other rich guys who run golf's most illustrious tournament will welcome fans of both genders - at least if they`ve coughed up $125 for a four-day pass.
But if a woman were to look around and think, "Gee, this seems like a nice place - think I'll join," the answer from the membership committee would be: "Darlin,' you run along now."
This has led to Hootie's well-publicized dust-up with Martha Burk, the slightly nutty head of the National Council of Women's Organizations.
Two weeks ago, as the bombs were dropping in Baghdad, Burk somehow found a way to link a stupid golf tournament and her cries of discrimination to the war in Iraq.
"Showcasing a club that discriminates against women is an insult to the nearly quarter-million women in the U.S. armed forces," she said while trying to persuade CBS not to televise the Masters. "It's appalling that the women who are willing to lay down their lives for democratic ideals should be shut out of this club."
Hoo, boy. Nothing like keeping things in perspective, Martha.
But Martha will be at the Masters, too, this week, picketing the place to draw attention to her cause.
Unfortunately, because of a court ruling, Burk won't be allowed to picket in front of Augusta National's main gates, where anyone attending the Masters would actually see her.
Instead, she's been confined to a wretched little field she calls "a pit," hard by a pawn shop and a bleep-looking apartment complex, that may be the most depressing place in all of Augusta.
This, of course, is fine with Hootie and the boys, who would just as soon have all the feminist riff-raff swallowed by a sinkhole.
Apparently, they're not nuts about the peaceniks, either. Because according to an article in the Augusta Chronicle, fans attending the Masters won't be allowed to wear buttons or hats or T-shirts that express a political or social point of view.
Presumably, it's OK to wear a $150 Masters sweater from the souvenir shop, or even the kind of hideous green-and-gold Bermuda shorts I saw on one geezer during a Masters broadcast last year.
