By Tyler Dikun 
As a history buff, I often find myself comparing current events to past circumstances. Place yourself in the shoes of a wealthy white family of the 1890s. As a successful New York family, you have come to reside on Park Avenue. Your days consist of long walks in the park and browsing Macy’s Department Store or the Sears Catalogue for the next ‘must-have’ item. You have mastered the art of living completely ignorant to the problems that millions of your fellow New Yorkers must face.
What we actually know of New York in this time period is that it was a city infested with disease, greatly lacking in sanitation and unimaginably corrupt. By 1900, 2.3 million (roughly 70 percent) of New Yorkers lived in shoddy tenement houses, devoid of many basic needs. Legendary writer Mark Twain summed up this time of great social innovation coupled with a lack of social welfare in the three words, “the Gilded Age.”
Sitting on my couch watching the Masters at Augusta National yesterday, I noticed this same prevailing theme. The course was as pristine and lush as ever and the tournament was one of the best in recent memory. Yet Augusta National is a golf community that thrives on exclusivity. You might interject at this point that Augusta National has the right to be exclusive in order to maintain its place among golf’s most hallowed grounds.
I have no problem with a country club keeping away potential members via membership fees or by invoking a waiting list 10 years long. My problem with the Masters is that the club it has been played at for over 80 years symbolizes a traditional ideology that America has long since done away with.
Let me be clear in saying that Augusta National is not a racist or discriminatory organization. Augusta has accepted minority members in the past and offered membership to two women in 2012.
Rather, the likes of Chairman Billy Payne seem to hide behind a philosophy of fraternity over moral understanding. In the mind of Augusta National, this is a course built by men and should be set aside for men. Only as a result of public pressure, such as in 2002 when Martha Burk of the National Council of Women’s Organizations pressured then Chairman Hootie Johnson to accept a female member by 2003, has Augusta rethought its image.
The Masters Invitational is a gilded tournament. The course sits in Georgia’s second largest city, Augusta. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the city’s unemployment rate still outpaces both state and national averages. Augusta is a city with an African-American mayor, yet the club has few to no African-American members. It did not admit its first black member until 1990 when the USGA, PGA America and the PGA Tour ruled that no club could host a PGA tournament if it did not admit minority members. While Augusta National has raised millions in charity donations for the surrounding community, and estimates put its economic impact in Augusta at over $100 million per year, one cannot escape the sense that the members of such a treasured American golf course want to hold on to a certain exclusivity that seems a bit outdated.
