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Augusta anxiety
Little sympathy for Burk in home of Masters
Posted: Thursday April 10, 2003 12:17 PM
By John Donovan, SI.com
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- It's 7:15 on a drizzly Thursday morning, and the Waffle House on Washington Road, maybe a dozen or so fast food places up the street from the famed Augusta National Golf Club, is just starting to get going.
There are booths to be had here, and a couple extra stools at the counter. But the Gore-Tex crowd, with their umbrellas and two-toned shoes and pleated pants, is starting to fill them up.
"How y'all doing," asks the hostess as they trickle in, looking for something scattered, covered or smothered before their final steps to golf's Holy Land. "C'mon in."
A regular named Chester walks in and, just like that, the tone for the day -- it's been, in truth, the undertone for months and months now -- is immediately evident.
"I hear Martha Burk's comin' here," a chuckling Chester tells Jean, a waitress working the counter.
"Comin' here? Today?" Jean says, raising her eyebrows and pointing at the counter. "I'd throw her out."
Here, outside the 325 green acres of Augusta National, sits the city of Augusta, the second-largest city in Georgia, home to more than 200,000 people. It is a city with a rich history that reaches back more than 250 years. There are beautiful, columned mansions along Walton Way, friendly neighborhoods on tree-lined streets in this city alongside the Savannah River. It is a place that showcases the best of the South -- the genteel manners, the famed Southern hospitality, a sense of place and purpose -- and, sometimes, some of its worse.
Here there are racial divisions in a city that is split almost equally among white and black. There is political infighting that has fallen along racial lines. There is, sometimes, that unshakeable feel of being on the losing side in a battle with the modern world.
Inside Augusta National lie the velvety fairways, the flawless greens, the flowering azaleas and the blooming dogwoods that help make up one of the most famous courses in the world. There are some of the most cherished landmarks of the game: Magnolia Lane, Rae's Creek, Amen Corner, the Eisenhower Tree. Inside, there are the whispers of Bobby Jones. And, of course, there is the Masters, the best golf tournament anywhere.
But here, on the outside, is the real world. And it's not always pretty.
If Burk, the crusading head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, thought it was difficult to get into Augusta National, she'll find it's no picnic outside the gates, either.
"Most people could care less," says Henry Scheer, the owner of Mally's Bagels and Grits (slogan: Where North Meets South in Perfect Hominy), which sits on Washington Road a half-mile northwest of the club. "I mean, if her whole objective is to have Sandra Day O'Connor play 18 holes of golf [at Augusta National] ... I mean, how can you get up a fight for that?"
By now, every political junkie and sports-page reader in America knows what this weekend is all about. Burk is railing against Augusta National's male-only membership, calling it sex discrimination. Augusta National, headed by the equally driven William "Hootie" Johnson, claims a constitutional right to pick whomever it wants as a member and resents any charges of discrimination.
It would be hard to find many people in this city who sympathize with Burk, whose campaign climaxes with a protest that is scheduled to be held across the street and down the road from the club on Saturday. The sympathy vote seems even harder to come by now because Burk's in-their-face pounding of Augusta National has had a negative economic impact throughout this city.
Numbers are hard to come by, and even harder to verify. But Scheer, for one, says he will lose $4,500 a day in dinners and catering for this year's Masters. He attributes the dropoff mainly to a faltering economy.
But Scheer says that many of his fellow business owners point the finger at Burk, who they say has scared away big-spending companies and high-rolling executives afraid of being associated with Augusta National.
"For a lot of them, this is their year," Scheer says of the week of the Masters. "It's killing them."
There are signs all over town that support Johnson. "WELCOME MASTERS/GO HOOTIE/MARTHA GO HOME" proclaims the marquee outside of Turner's Keyboards, on the other side of the club along Washington Road.
But, more than the debate on simple right and wrong, a lot of folks support Johnson and Augusta National simply because they'd just as soon see Masters week return to what it once was.
"I don't think anybody is on a higher ground or anything like that," Scheer says. "It's strictly money."
Burk's crusade has hit Augusta National in the wallet, too. The club, afraid of repercussions against its corporate sponsors, said it would not accept sponsorships this year. So the Masters, again to be televised on CBS, will be commercial free this year, with no television ads from Coca-Cola or IBM or any of the other longtime Masters sponsors. That decision alone cost Augusta National a reported $20 million.
"I don't think," Johnson said Wednesday, "I have experienced anything quite like this assault."
Despite the loss of revenue, inside the 70-year-old club, Burk's protestations may hardly be felt. To many fans, the Masters will be what it always is: The best golfers in the world on what many consider the best course in the world, playing for the most coveted prize in the game in the season's first major.
But outside the club, the firestorm of controversy that Burk, and others, have brought on Augusta National this past year will culminate in a dizzying array of protests, sound bites and outright silliness.
Augusta is in for what Sports Illustrated calls the Cirque de Burk.
"We're just a typical Southern city," Scheer says of the place he's lived for the past 10 years, "struggling like everybody else."
Typical? No, not Augusta. Not this weekend.
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