Annual Augusta National He-Man Woman Haters Club Masters Dilemma

So what can the PGA do?

 

There is next to nothing to be gained by a 15-handicapper being able to claim he hit a shot from 180 yards at Augusta National, just like a world-famous tour player did a few days before him.

 

ANGC was not forced to comply, but the Shoal Creek controversy was what spurred ANGC to make that move.

The Masters is not a PGA Tour event. Any Masters-PGA Tour links are one-way ... the Tour incorporates what happens at the Masters, not the other way around*. In years past, in fact, there often would be a PGA Tour event the same week as the Masters ... the winner of that event, however, would not get the automatic Masters invite that Tour winners are usually given.

*Same with the U.S. Open.

 

Would you feel the same way if a column, written by someone who had taken that round, argued strongly against the ANGC membership policy?

I'll agree with you that it came off as sycophantic. Maybe not the worst, though. You ever been around a big-time Southern football program?

 

As a sportswriter, you may not be a "watchdog", but if you work for a newspaper, you likely work for the main watchdog in your community.

And, if your paper is playing that role, calling out corrupt politicians, business leaders, or union officials, then you can't be accepting gifts.

It's hypocritical, and your actions reflect on everyone else who works for your paper.

If the golf writer is taking gifts from the people he covers, how do I know the cops reporter isn't doing the same thing?

 

Hey, some of my posts were about coffee, and women. Well, about coffee anyway.

 

As noted before YF, I did not enter the lottery, but it was because it made me feel uncomfortable in a sports way, not a journalism ethics way. It just reminded me a little too much of a fan running onto the field after the last out of the World Series. But both during and after my sportswriting career, I have accepted invitations from members to play at snooty private clubs with really nice courses, including some famous courses, and I had no qualms accepting without inquiring into their internal membership practices. I was being a guest of an individual, and I sure didn't feel compromised. Do you think those situations are different?

 

Fair enough.

That's a fairly big stretch, but I'll concede the point.

I guess I just don't consider the round of golf to be a gift. It's more like a courtesy, like the example I used of the very wealthy arts collector allowing a reporter to tour the private collection. But I can certainly see how someone might see it differently.

I don't run up against ethical dilemmas in my work very much. I do run into the occasional student who wants to pop for my restaurant meal -- once I inadvertently got waited on by a then-student, and she arranged for our meal to be comped, then clocked out and left before I could do anything about it. TILT -- and textbook publishers are always ready to buy lunch or dinner. These are very minor trinkets/courtesies, however, and they come up so infrequently that I don't pay much attention to them.

 

I do think that's different.

You're allowed to be a journalist and have friends. And, it's a lot different if you're playing a course with someone because you're their friend, than if you are playing with them because you are a journalist.

The round at Augusta is made available to journalists only because they are journalists.

 

Well, I've never once heard of a newspaper or magazine or network banning its golf writer from playing the round at Augusta if that person's name was called in the lottery. Indeed, they almost always demand a story of column about the experience. Apparently you're a one-man band on this one.

 

This says a lot more about the industry than it does about me.

Wrong is wrong.

You know this objectively. It's just such a unique opportunity, you choose to ignore it.

 

Yeah ... but it says plenty about you, too.

I really wish you'd actually, like, enter this business so you could save everyone from the disastrous mistakes they're making.