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The plot
Grassy field in Augusta will turn into field of screams Saturday
Posted: Friday April 11, 2003 11:36 AM
By John Donovan, SI.com
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- It's just a small plot of land, really. A little over five acres. Flat, mostly. A few trees on one side, where there's a little bit of a dip. A lot of weeds. A lot of rain this week.
Saturday afternoon, it will be the center of the golf universe.
OK. So maybe it's not quite dead center in the fairway of the hacker's galaxy. Maybe it's somewhere in the rough. Regardless, the 5.1-acre site a half-mile from the main gates of Augusta National Golf Club will serve as center stage Saturday, the place where all that stuff surrounding the first major of the year will take place.
And if you have to ask what all that stuff is ... well, trust us, you may not want to know.
Saturday afternoon, the Great Debate surrounding the Masters '03 reaches its big old climax in that grassy field alongside Washington Road in Augusta. There, the indomitable Martha Burk, head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, and dozens, probably hundreds, of protesters sympathetic to her particular cause will do their thing. They will protest against what they claim is discrimination by 70-year-old Augusta National and its 300-member all-male membership.
Burk didn't plan to be tromping around in the field. She'd have preferred to picket in front of the main gates to the club, across the street and northwest of the site. But after several legal challenges were denied on appeal, Burk and her supporters will have to stick to what she calls "The Pit." She has made some rumbling that three- or four-member groups might still try to picket in front of the club Saturday, though law enforcement officials say they won't allow that, either, citing safety concerns along crowded Washington Road.
Sorry. That's all that stuff again.
The fact is, Burk and her supporters do not constitute nearly everything that's going on at the Masters on Saturday in Augusta. There is the Rev. Jesse Jackson and supporters of his Rainbow/PUSH coalition, who will be hanging around the general vicinity of Augusta National, though they may not be in that same field of screams. Jackson, truth be told, isn't expected to be in Augusta at all, though he backs Burk, going so far as calling Augusta National's all-male membership policy "gender apartheid."
There's also Todd Manzi, who touts himself as The Anti-Burk. Says that right on his business card: Todd Manzi, The Anti-Burk.
The former Tampa ad man built himself an anti-Burk machine (www.theburkstopshere.com and www.itakesballs.com), tried to make some money off of it by selling anti-Burk merchandise (buttons, T-shirts, golf balls, caps) and now finds himself in hock up to his ittakesballs ballcap and in danger of being even further marginalized.
This, he says, isn't about sex discrimination.
"That's my problem. That's not the issue. It's not about the gender ratio of private clubs," Manzi says, standing alone Thursday under a small tent in the sopping field during a steady rainstorm. "What I'm trying to say is let's not let what Martha Burk does affect the next people down the road."
Manzi says he is concerned that Burk will get away with what he sees as the blackmailing of corporations and executives that have memberships to Augusta National, and that she'll do it again to the people who oppose her next cause.
He's realistic about the outcome here, though.
"I'm $35,000 in debt, and the message isn't out," Manzi says. "I've bumbled and I've picked out the wrong times ... I've made a ton of mistakes. I've been drubbed pretty hard. I think I'm going down in a spectacular ball of flames."
Somewhere on that field, too, on Saturday, Allison Greene, an Augusta restaurant manager who was born and raised in the town, will try to hand Burk a petition. On it are the names of more than 1,600 people who back her cause. Greene, 28, founded the group Women Against Martha Burk.
Greene has one question for Burk, if she gets the chance to ask it.
"Why would you destroy our city? Whether that was her intention or not. Why would you destroy our city?" says Greene, who blames Burk for hurting business in Augusta during the Masters. "I know how cheesy this sounds, but the Masters is Christmas in April."
To get to Burk on Saturday, Greene will have to fight through some other groups, which may include The New American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which by most accounts is a one-man "group" that supports Augusta National's rights to limit its membership; Golfers for a Real Cause, which opposes Burk's stance; and the Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny, a group headed by the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson that opposes Jackson.
It's a lot of ... stuff.
"One good thing about all this is," says a cheery Greene. "By Monday of next week -- who cares?"
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