Masters Controversy Rages On

April 10 -- Martha Burk is angry. Angry, she says, that in these tight economic times corporate executives are throwing lavish parties at this week's Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Ga.

"Open bars, liquor flowing freely" she says, listing the excesses, "exotic entertainment, private jets."

The CEOs' membership in the elite and expensive Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts the Masters tournament, gives them entrée to one of the highest-profile events in sports and access to the most elite golfers in the world.

And Burk, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, is launching a Web site to list just who those CEOs are.

But the executives' excesses are not at the heart of her crusade. She's not trying to put a stop to the perks and parties that come with Augusta National Golf Club membership. She wants to make sure women can have them, too.

"They're shutting women out," says Burk. "This is wrong. It needs to be changed."

The Augusta National Golf Club, like a number of golf clubs in the United States, does not admit women as members.

"Immoral," Burk says, "sex discrimination at the highest level."

Turning to Bad Press

She has been determined, for months, to force the Augusta club to change. But her early efforts backfired when the club's chairman, Hootie Johnson, dug in his heels, saying that while there "may come a time when we include women as members of our club," he wasn't going to let Burk's organization set "the timetable."

So Burk has decided to change tactics — targeting, instead, the corporate executives who pay the dues to join the club. Her aim is to make those executives extremely uncomfortable, by contrasting the expensive parties to facts about layoffs at their companies, tax problems, and outlandish perks — in short: getting them bad press.

What do those corporate troubles have to do with the fact that Augusta won't admit women? Very little. But it is an effective way, she says, of getting the Augusta club to finally listen to her.