Augusta National found time to reschedule The Masters, but women got wiped entirely from the calendar
The Masters, a tradition unlike any other, is breaking with tradition. Augusta National announced on Monday that the tournament will be moving from April to November 9-15, 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Augusta National managed to keep one tradition alive, though: mistreating and ignoring women golfers. While the Masters will be moved to November, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur is being outright canceled for 2020. No makeup dates, no wait-and-see, it’s just being canceled.
Fred S. Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National, explained why the club’s lone women’s event was canceled and not rescheduled.
After careful consideration and following an extensive review process, we also have made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Ultimately, the many scheduling challenges with NCAA tournaments, the World Amateur Team Championships, the LPGA Q-Series and other events when women’s amateur golf resumes led to this decision.
Ridley isn’t wrong; holding an event at that time would be difficult — but it’s not impossible. The Masters is a complex multi-day event and it has been neatly rescheduled for November. The women’s amateur tournament is three rounds — only one at Augusta National — and features just 72 golfers. Despite the “scheduling challenges,” it still could have been held with golfers willing to forgo other events.
Even though the women’s amateur tournament is exponentially shorter than the Masters and features far fewer golfers, it was apparently impossible to reschedule, even though the Masters will still be played. The lack of commitment to finding a new date just illustrates how little the famously sexist golf club cares about women’s golf, or women’s inclusion in the sport at all.
Augusta National’s embarrassing history toward women is well documented. Founded in 1932, the exclusive, for-profit golf club has around 300 members, and has invited just six women to be members in its 88-year history. They only started doing that in 2012, after 80 entire years of existence, and a decade after an embarrassing public relations kerfuffle about their men-only policy that led them to broadcast the 2003 and 2004 Masters tournaments without commercials.
It’s worth mentioning that Augusta National is a private club, and therefore gets to set its own membership requirements. It had every right to decide that all members were required to be male until 2012. But it’s also worth mentioning that most private golf clubs don’t get a marquee event on the PGA Tour calendar, along with millions of dollars in TV revenue and publicity. They host a major golf tournament for men and very pointedly do not host one for women.
That’s why it was seen as progress in 2019 when the first Augusta National Women’s Amateur was held. Women were finally getting their own event, and near the same time as the Masters. While that is some sort of progress, the very existence of that tournament only emphasizes that Augusta National does not care about women’s golf.
To start, it’s not a major women’s tournament. It’s an amateur tournament, so all professional women’s golfers are not allowed to participate. Circumventing the LPGA and focusing on amateur golfers means that they don’t have to consider hosting a major tournament for women. That way, the club can still feel magnanimous for offering women a chance to compete on a world-famous golf course while appearing to be progressive about Augusta National’s history of sexism.
They are just appearing to be progressive, though. While the tournament is billed as the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, only a small portion is played at Augusta National and less than half of invited golfers get a chance to play there. The first two rounds take place at Champions Retreat Golf Club, and then the field is cut from 72 to 30 golfers. Only those 30 golfers will get to play the final round at Augusta National.
So, the tournament is for amateurs only, meaning LPGA golfers are barred from participating, and just one round is played at Augusta National despite how it’s billed. And on top of all of that, the organizers just canceled it — literally their only event for female golfers — for 2020 instead of finding a new date. If Augusta National cares about women’s golf, they are doing a superb job of hiding it from anyone and everyone.
There is a small shred of good news for female amateur golfers who won’t get to compete in this year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur: Those who accepted an invitation to compete in the 2020 championship will be invited to compete in the 2021 championship — provided they remain an amateur. If any of them turn pro, Augusta National will continue its unspoken policy of pretending that professional women golfers — and women in general — do not exist.
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