Augusta National Softens its Stance on Excluding Women

Billy Payne, dodging questions.

Georgia’s Augusta National Golf Club, site of the prestigious annual Masters Tournament, appears to be reconsidering its longstanding and controversial policy of refusing to admit female members. With the tournament entering Round Two this morning, the club released the following statement to the press:

The Augusta National Golf Club, in keeping with this nation’s noblest traditions of extending equal treatment to many different kinds of people that we find acceptable, hereby announces that as of Friday, April 6, 2012, we will open our membership to any woman who can prove empirically that she psychologically, physiologically, and genetically male.

We sincerely hope that our progress toward equality among all the right kinds of people doesn’t go unnoticed among our sponsors—many of whom employ women, so we’re told—or our television viewers. Because many of those folks who watch our sponsors’ ads this weekend will be women, and you know how women love to shop! Boy howdy!

All kidding aside, folks, we here at Augusta National are proud of our accomplishments in racial and gender equity. Why, for decades we ensured that black men, while certainly not good enough to play here, would nevertheless find gainful employment carrying white men’s clubs.

And hell, it’s been more than thirty years now since we admitted our first black member, way back in 1990. What a time that was, with our humble little Augusta National Golf Club leading the charge for civil rights, not even four decades after the Montgomery Bus Boycott!

In conclusion, the Augusta National Golf Club looks forward to welcoming its first female member, assuming, once again, that she is actually a man.

And also preferably not, you know, a Jew.

 —Augusta National Golf Club
April 6, 2012