Augusta, Champion Chauvenist Pig

Too many fingers for that sign

Dear Silly Billy Chairman of Augusta National Golf Course,

         Oops, sorry I’m behaving like a stupid woman. I got the spelling of your name wrong but not the meaning. It’s Billy Payne isn’t it?

         I’m sure you’ll agree with me that things have hit a depressing low in America when women don’t know their place in the land of the free.

       You would think Virginia ‘Ginni’ Rometty (now known as ‘Uppity’ Rometty) would have known better than to complicate your life by becoming IBM’s first woman Chief Executive shortly before this year’s Master’s tournament began at your club.

        To make matters worse she’s a beautiful, dizzy blonde. She’s got brains as well and no man likes that.

Has the woman no shame? Just because IBM has been one of the main sponsors of the Master’s does she now think that she can become the first woman member of your club?

Everything was fine as long as there was a man at the helm of IMB. But nearly 80 years of chauvinist pig tradition would be for nothing if you were to allow Ginni to break the spell at your stuffy club.

It just wouldn’t do old boy. We’ve never allowed them to become members before and there’s no reason to start now.

It must be satisfying to head an exclusive clan that was founded on solid grounds of good, old fashioned prejudice aptly put into words by your co-founder Clifford Roberts when he said, "As long as I’m alive golfers will be white and caddies black."

That’s only right. You couldn’t have Whites carrying those heavy bags could you?

It took 48 years before you racialists abolished the rule that players had to use the club’s Black caddies.

Women and Blacks are in the same inferior category presumably.

How long is it going to take you and your members to hum and haw before you let women in? No wonder you don’t want to talk about it.

Billy I hope you and the rest of your 300 odd members haven’t got one of these unacceptable females or even worse a Black woman at home as a wife?

Wait a minute I see Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the world’s richest men are on your member’s list. How do their wives Belinda and Susan feel about being stamped second class citizens by the Augusta Golf Classification Board?

It’s ridiculous to think what a fuss you Yanks kicked up about South Africa’s apartheid regime that kept the Blacks very much subservient to Whites. But even that disappeared 18 years ago.

I knew we shouldn’t have given a Green jacket to that Black chap, Tiger somebody or other just because he won the Masters four times. They don’t know how to behave. Look what he’s done to decorum, one of our founding principles.

He’s now more famous for that, ‘You can’t see the Woods for the birds’, joke than anything else.

You had to publicly admonish him for his sexual exploits which were splashed all over the world. As you rightly said he ‘disappointed all of us and in particular was no role model to our kids and grandchildren.’

(Thinks: Discriminating against Blacks and women is the role model to aim at)

It’s just as well our winners can’t take those jackets with them. Imagine what it would do to our name if doing it dressed only in one of them became the latest kinky, sex fad.

On top of that this chap was fined for spitting on the 12^th green at the Dubai Desert Classic. Putting through that filth would be no joke?

And just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse he throws a tantrum on our own course at this year’s Masters, swearing and kicking his club because he shot a 75.

Billy you’ve got to do something about him now. Forget about the women who the media are going on about. This is much more important.

Fortunately our Ginni is used to you men feeling inferior to clever girls. Fortune Magazine has had her in its 50 most powerful Women in Business list for seven consecutive years ranking her 7^th last year. Of course that was another version of chauvinism.

We couldn’t have her beating a lot of men in the list of the 50 Most powerful People in Business now could we Billy.

Phil Michelson & Charl Schwartzel

Anyway I told her it’s not a big deal because golf is not a game for real men. Can you think of any other sport Billy that allows you to move your ball to a better position for the most trivial of reasons when you’ve hit it there yourself in the first place?

And you complain about poor old Tiger, yet players are allowed to fiddle with their balls on the greens in full view of everybody until they feel comfortable.

Not being too familiar with the game I’ve always wondered how many strokes you are penalised if you get relief behind a bush – one or two?

Yours truly,

Jon, a formidable Pig Sticker.