The Last Bastions Of Bigotry

By William A. Henry III.

When the U.S. men's pro-golf tour vowed last summer to stop holding its tournaments at clubs that discriminated on the basis of race, the decision was hailed as somewhat akin to Jackie Robinson's arrival in major-league baseball in 1947. The Professional Golfers' Association heard a sudden outcry against holding the 1990 championship at all-white Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham -- and against the widely known but long-ignored fact that 17 of its 39 tour courses were at private clubs with no black members. The P.G.A. quickly imposed antibias rules, and Shoal Creek admitted its first black as an "honorary" member. Within months the women's and senior pro tours and the U.S. Golf Association, which sponsors the U.S. Open and Amateur tournaments, followed suit.

Cynics said the repentant parties were probably motivated by money: image- sensitive corporations and TV networks provide most of pro golf's cash prizes, and the controversy prompted sponsors like IBM to yank $2 million in advertising from ABC's P.G.A. championship telecast. Whatever the impetus, the response prompted such seasoned observers as Arthur Ashe, the Wimbledon tennis champion and historian of black athletics, to predict sweeping change at exclusive clubs. Said Ashe: "In two or three years it is going to be completely different."

A year later, however, it is disappointingly the same. Says Calvin Peete, the foremost black pro: "Shoal Creek really did not have much impact." The nation's private golf clubs -- symbols of power and privilege at play, manicured enclaves of racial, religious and sexual discrimination -- show few signs of more than token reform.

To be sure, at least five all-white clubs opted to change behavior, including Crooked Stick in Carmel, Ind., which will be host to the 1991 P.G.A. championship next month. But four of those five have admitted one black each, and the fifth, Baltusrol, in Springfield, N.J., has pledged only to comply with the racial rules by its date for playing host to the U.S. Open in 1993.

Worse, these compliant clubs are in the minority. At least eight others gave up major championships rather than meet the rules, although a few have since begun to admit blacks and can regain eligibility. The St. Louis Country Club in Ladue, Mo., ceded the 1992 Women's Amateur Championships, ostensibly because it is renovating its greens. The Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Ill., relinquished the 1993 Walker Cup. Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pa., took in a few blacks as junior members in recent months but withdrew from the 1993 P.G.A. championship because it could not guarantee that such members would move up to full voting status by then. The Merion Golf Club in nearby Ardmore concluded that it would not be integrated in time for the U.S. Women's Open in 1994.

That is apparently typical: industry experts estimate that three-quarters of the nation's 5,232 private golf and country clubs have no black members. Among 74 private clubs in the Chicago area, only 10 say they have black members, and only 26 enroll women. In the moneyed Westchester County suburbs of New York, only 11 of the 39 clubs have black members. In metropolitan Detroit, the tally is 11 of 38.

Discrimination against Hispanics is less sweeping but nonetheless apparent. In a 1990 survey of 20 courses on the pro-golfing circuit, nine said they had Hispanics as members; one declared it had none. The other 10 courses did not respond on the issue. Says Rudy Berumen, a Tempe, Ariz., member of the Mexican-American Golf Association: "It's not that easy for a Hispanic to join some clubs around here. But it would be tougher for a black, unless he was a Governor or Senator."

For women, who were 50% of the sport's new recreational players last year, forms of clubhouse discrimination vary. They may be denied membership or admitted only as associates of their husbands. They may be excluded from certain dining rooms and bars or get lower priority for desirable weekend- morning tee times. Last year Marcia Welch charged Pittsburgh's Wildwood Country Club with most of these indignities. The crowning insult was that the club, which she joined while married, told her to reapply and pay a new membership fee after her divorce. Even female pro players can be snubbed on the job until the tour's antibias rules take effect next year. The L.P.G.A. tourney July 5 to 7 was at Highland Meadows in Sylvania, Ohio, where women are not voting members.

Veteran pro Tom Watson, whose wife and children are Jewish, resigned from the Kansas City Country Club last year after it blackballed accounting mogul Henry Bloch, a Jew. Although the club changed its mind about Bloch, Watson did not rejoin. In a New York Times column last month, he decried the "hypocrisy" of admitting a single black to "integrate" and urged, "Let's discriminate right now, each one of us, privately, between what is right and what is wrong."

The wrongs seem obvious. The highly visible act of excluding people from prominent community institutions based on skin color serves as a powerful and disturbing symbol that racism is considered tolerable in the nation's top social echelons -- just as excluding women and Jews sends a message that sexism and anti-Semitism should still be considered permissible. In addition, in almost all cases, the private clubs bring together a community's business, professional and political elites and thus perpetuate patterns of unequal opportunity.

The clubs' excuse is that the very essence of privacy is freedom of association. Most Americans accept that discrimination is wrong when it comes to work, school or government services but are queasy about social intrusions. And many all-white clubs do not see themselves as consciously discriminatory. Aronimink said it had not excluded blacks -- none had sought admission. New members are proposed by old members, who naturally choose relatives, friends and neighbors, reinforcing the circle of privilege. The web tightens if a club has a waiting list. Promptly admitting minority members would mean jumping them ahead of others who have patiently stayed in line.

That concern was cited by Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, Calif., when the club last September withdrew its dramatic oceanside course from a P.G.A.-sanctioned pro-amateur tournament that it had been host to since 1947. Cypress Point insists that it has no ban on blacks, although it has no black members and none on the waiting list, where the delay is seven years. Vice President Dan Quayle, who belongs to Maryland's male-only Burning Tree Country Club, played at Cypress Point in December; he said later he had been assured it "does not discriminate." Members may genuinely believe it does not.

Snobbery and exclusion have long been inseparable from golf. Playing even one round requires the use of expensive equipment, access to landscaped acres of greensward and, for most people, expensive lessons in technique. A caddy is a sort of walk-along valet. At private Baltusrol, new members put up $25,000 as an initiation fee, plus a $5,250 bond and $3,900 yearly dues. In times gone by, those economic facts alone might have barred most blacks. But, just in case, the sport had overtly racist rules and practices. Blacks did not play in the elite Masters tournament in Augusta, Ga., for 41 years. The phrase "Caucasian race only" was part of the P.G.A.'s eligibility rules until 1961.

Despite this legacy, minorities now share in the game's broad popularity. On Southern California's public links, typically up to one-third of the players are black or Hispanic. At the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, where the initiation fee is $60,000, general manager Bill Masse says one-fifth of the 1,500 members are black, Hispanic, Asian or of Middle Eastern descent. Admission procedures are as Old Guard as at any all-white club: an applicant must be sponsored by six members who have known him or her for three years. Says Masse: "We admitted our first black member in the 1940s. We're known as nondiscriminatory."

The lack of entree at elite courses may contribute to golf's lack of astonishing black role models, a la Michael Jordan -- except, perhaps, for Jordan himself, an eager amateur who joined the Wynstone Club in suburban Chicago because it offers color-blind corporate memberships. Only four of the P.G.A.'s 240 touring pros are black -- and just 25 of the 20,000 country-club pros. The sport's one faint hope for minority recruitment is the Atlanta-based Calvin Peete National Minority Golf Foundation. Set up in 1989 to award scholarships to promising blacks discovered on public courses, it has yet to sponsor anyone. Donations total $100,000, barely enough for administrative expenses. Only $20,000 has come from pro golf and pro golfers -- and not a penny from private country clubs.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: CLUBS THAT MET THE NEW POLICY ...

...AND SOME THAT DIDN'T

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York, with other bureaus