You could be forgiven if a trace of cynicism enters your thoughts when discussing Augusta National Golf Club’s long history of exclusion, racism, misogyny, and believing its membership was motivated by magnanimity and not a selfish, self-interest and concern over their international branding when their exclusionary policies were relaxed and their membership rolls expanded late in the 20th century.
Since the club’s inception in 1934 and the birth of the Master’s golf tournament, the club has excluded from membership, minorities, women, and persons of color.
It took the 1990 controversy surrounding Shoal Creek and the PGA Championship held at that private club to finally encourage the PGA Tour, the PGA of America, and the United States Golf Association to establish guidelines prohibiting discriminatory membership policies against minorities and women at clubs where national and international tournaments were being held.
A policy that would, despite auspices of private club membership and white privilege, prompt the Augusta National Golf Club to admit a black member in September of 1990.
And twenty-two years later, in August of 2012, after protests from the National Association of Women, to finally admit two female members, ushering in an era of belated recognition of a global economy and ravenous appetites of an international market and the worldwide audience for the spectacle the Masters Tournament has become.
It was the marketing genius of Masters Chairman Billy Payne, that enjoined, expanded, and enabled the very private invitational golf tournament Bobby Jones created a century ago, along with its reluctant and reticent membership, to open its portals to the world and announce with its particular shade of green, the glorious harbingers of Spring and the advent of the international golf season.
The club would continue their benevolent marketing and inclusion with support of the Asian Amateur Championship allowing the winner of that tournament entrance into the Master’s field, expanding their marketing presence into the largest geopolitical region of the world.
And later adding a national cohort of Junior golfers with the Pitch, Putt, and Drive competition, held prior to the Masters.
And finally, expanding their incorporation and inclusion of all genders, allowing the best female Amateurs in the world onto the grounds by hosting the National Women’s Amateur preceding Masters week.
Assuredly validating Payne’s vision of, albeit ever so briefly, allowing the world to participate in the wonders of, a tradition unlike any other.
A tradition that will now be devotedly watched, followed, and shared by 126 million Japanese golf devotees, as Hideki Matsuyama becomes the first Master’s Championship in that countries history and only the second player of Asian descent to win on the world’s largest golf stage after Y.E. Chen claimed the 2009 PGA Championship.
Coupled with Tsubasa Kajitani winning The Augusta National Women’s Amateur the week before, golfers of Asian decent now hold center stage going into the 2021 Summer Olympics being held in Tokyo, Japan later this year.
All because the staid, ultra-conservative, green-jacketed, fraternity of Augusta National members, saw fit to allow the collective nations of the world an entrance on to its hallowed grounds.
A doorway into empathy and understanding that all citizens of the world should emulate in these turbulent and trying times.
An international, multi-racial, inclusionary, and cultural awakening, I’m certain, Bobby Jones would be very proud to claim dominion over.
I listened in as the 2021 Masters Champion, Hideki Matsuyama conducted his Championship press conference following his historic win.
Please listen here.
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