Fpink Ridley’s Wednesday morning tackle to the media at Augusta Nationwide has turn into an episode in self-congratulation and script-reading. A box-ticking train for Ridley, the Augusta chairman, and his acolytes turns into an annual frustration for journalists. Presumably they wouldn’t need it another approach.
These presiding over the Masters swagger with pleasure on the Augusta Nationwide Ladies’s Newbie and the youngsters’s Drive, Chip and Putt Championship which precede the opening main of the 12 months. No one of a squeamish disposition ought to watch both on tv; broadcasters fall over themselves to supply gushing superlatives to some extent which works past parody. The Inexperienced Jackets lap this up. “Look! Look! We’re progressive! There are kids carrying shorts and the whole lot!” By Monday of Masters week, the massive stuff begins. England’s Lottie Woad, the newly topped girls’s newbie champion, can be again at Florida State College by the point the 88th Masters champion is topped. The present rapidly strikes on on this nook of Georgia.
Ridley, on the helm in Augusta since 2017, is a moderniser in membership context. He has typically been a power for good in what was as soon as a grim surroundings. Augusta Nationwide’s status in the local people has been enhanced throughout his tenure, such has been the dedication to native causes. The membership is an effective neighbour. The actual fact there’s a girls’s occasion right here in any respect is to date faraway from the membership’s historic prejudice that it reveals issues have edged ahead. Newbie golf is a trigger near Ridley’s coronary heart, given his one-time eminence in that scene.
Bringing in youngsters to play challenges on the apply floor is honest sufficient, had been it not plastered everywhere in the broadcast media and spoken about in such preposterously lofty phrases. However that is hardly the stuff of revolution. Feminine opponents are permitted one apply spherical and one with scorecard in hand, having slugged it out for 36 holes at a course half an hour away. This nonetheless has the whiff of tokenism from an organisation that first permitted girls as members – and on the level of a bayonet – solely 12 years in the past. Solely probably the most devoted of golf followers might reel off winners of the ladies’s newbie right here. There may be nowhere close to sufficient wider relevance.
Augusta ought to stage an annual Ladies’s Masters. It ought to on the very least be deep into the planning part. There is no such thing as a remaining rationale, both in society or in respect of the membership itself, which adequately explains why it will not. Such a contest, if offering monetary reward akin to the male model – and Augusta has the riches to realize that readily – would make a real distinction. Augusta can provide girls’s elite golf a platform it has by no means been supplied. It’s unusual that there was no concerted name to make a Ladies’s Masters occur. It’s equally curious that feminine members of the membership, together with Annika Sörenstam, haven’t used their profile and voice to name for such a chance.
There may be already a Ladies’s British Open, which has been enhanced below Martin Slumbers’s stewardship of the R&A. The US Ladies’s Open exists. So, too, does the Ladies’s PGA Championship. It ought to be famous there are two different majors on the feminine golf schedule – the Chevron and Evian Championships – however there isn’t any set rule over the quota of marquee tournaments. No one goes to scream and bemoan scheduling points if the key run reaches half a dozen. A Masters can be genuinely aspirational for each rising and established feminine golfers.
The 2020 Masters is essentially forgotten on the premise it was performed in November due to the influence of coronavirus and Dustin Johnson cantered to a five-shot win. Nonetheless, the color and backdrop to that competitors provided recent perspective. Christmas-themed gnomes offered on-line like sizzling muffins. The golf course seemed and performed utterly in a different way from April and the normal Masters window. Augusta Nationwide closes throughout the summer season months. Scheduling a major girls’s occasion late within the 12 months would provide additional glimpses of that various image. Town of Augusta would absolutely be appreciative of a second week within the 12 months the place it may obtain spin-off advantages from a golf match.
A key drawback right here is that Augusta revels in its exclusivity. A golfer might flip as much as Magnolia Lane with $5m in a suitcase and never be allowed to cross the bollards. That the lots solely have entry to this web site for such a restricted interval in any given 12 months provides to its air of mystique. Doubling the spell of public interplay would really feel like sacrilege to many in positions of energy on the membership. No less than, that’s the impression that’s left to linger.
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A counter argument is that Augusta’s shopping for up of properties even near its boundary – the newest embody a small park, at a price of $350,000 (£275,000), and a industrial constructing the place individuals will spend $17,000 on hospitality – for the advantage of one week of the 12 months represents useless largesse even by Masters requirements. Massive-picture pondering is required, which factors squarely in the direction of girls’s golf.
Augusta Nationwide has the match expertise, the property and the monetary muscle to use parity between female and male skilled athletes. It additionally requires motivation. The dearth of any public proof of it tells us all we have to know concerning the chance of a Ladies’s Masters both on Ridley’s watch or past. This feels a pity. Augusta might redefine its personal sporting legacy with one assertion of intent.
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