The Providence Journal, April 7, 2021
There is no televised sporting event that better captures white privilege in America than the Masters golf tournament this week. The shrouded, museum-like TV coverage is a tell for many of the conspicuous display through sport of racism, income inequality and the inequities of U.S. economic and cultural life.
It is a twisted tale. So much good intention, great legacy golf and a terrific sport, alongside insurmountable American barriers, both spoken and unspoken. Viewers watch what is out of reach, while the PGA and its advertisers tell you about their efforts to grow the game in diverse populations. It is the American experience. Full of contradiction, and continuing a rising tide of envy that is at the choke point of so much anguish.
Private golf clubs such as the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, are shrines of the one percent. They are the best that America can be, and yet also the worst. They know it. The public knows it. And the PGA should try to do something about it. Why not take the full weight of the Masters week, and call for all private golf clubs across America to open their doors to the public once a day, every day, for at least one payable tee time of four golfers? Open up access to private clubs like Augusta in Tiger’s name, and in honor of him and of a more equitable America.
The campaign could be titled A Tee Time for All, with Tiger Woods as its symbol and sponsor. A tee, an access, to the best of what America has to offer, so that everybody has access to the best.
At the sacred Home of Golf in St Andrews, Scotland, people come throughout the year from all around the world just to walk and play the historic 600-year-old golf links. Men, women and children, old and young, are free to walk the course at all hours as golfers play. Tee times are open to the public every day. Most Scottish golf links are centered in the town, and very much connected to the town, as it is in St Andrews.
High on a hill in Newport, Rhode Island, is the austere Newport Country Club golf course — the site of the first U.S. Open, in 1895. It could be a mecca for golf in America, and also a tremendous resource and source of pride and fun for all New Englanders, but most people will never set foot on the course, or even see it. Like the Masters, it’s sequestered away by its wealthy members, a lonely gem. A links course in name only.
Near Boston, there are private courses such as The Country Club in Brookline and the Charles River Country Club in Newton. These golf clubs are private enclaves that have also lost their link to the public, as wealthy people continue to put up walls of one kind or another around their favorite things. Golfers should know better. It’s bad for the game not to have everybody included, and it’s unAmerican not to have everyone participating.
In the greatest democracy in the world, golf is losing its link to the people. Private golf clubs should look to Scotland not just to mimic links course design, but also for the right way to operate a club. Golf should be by and for the people, and to be linked by more than just land, and with a Tee Time for All.