A Sad Part of the Augusta Legacy...

    A friend and I met to hit some balls at a driving range some months ago and he pulled out an article clipped from, I believe, Golf Digest. It disturbed me. The content disturbed me and the lack of editorial comment disturbed me as it seems clear something should have been said.
   The article concerned, loosely, the Masters. As spring quickly approaches, so does the golfing highlight of the spring - The Masters. The course is unmatched for beauty and the design offers opportunity for drama and dexterity. It punishes mistakes. History speaks from every hole and every hole location. But I digress.
    The subject of the story was the boxer called Beau Jack, a one-time lightweight champion. He got his start at Augusta National. In fact, the legendary Mr. Bobby Jones, known as the greatest amateur ever to play, gave Beau Jack his start, staking him $2500 he'd raised from club members. Why would they invest in the career of this man?
    Beau Jack earned a reputation among the members of the club through "entertainment" he and other young black men provided. Here is a piece of the same article from Sports Illustrated:
    "IN THOSE days wealthy sportsmen would pit half a dozen blindfolded black men against each other, all at once, in a bloody spectacle called the battle royal. The last fighter standing was showered with coins. Fifteen-year-old Beau never lost a battle royal after he figured out a trick. "I stayed in a corner with my back to the ropes," he told Sports Illustrated years later. "Those other bigger fighters were busy trying to knock each other out. Whenever one of them backed up near me I slammed him good and knocked him out. One time my brother John Henry was in a battle royal with me, and we were the last two left. So I knocked him out, too."
    His biggest battle came during one of the first Masters. "All those rich people who'd come to Augusta to see the tournament had to be entertained at night," Jack said. "So the club put on this big battle royal in the dining room of the Bon-Air Hotel." The brawl came down to "me and one last big feller." Jack threw a long, looping bolo punch that knocked the man out. Now the men around the ring threw not coins but 10- and 20- and 50-dollar bills. He took $1,000 home that night.
    The steward at Augusta National gave Jack a job shining shoes at the club, where many of the golfers treated him as if he were invisible. "Only Mr. Bobby Jones had time for me," Jack told boxing writer Harry Zambelli."
    The story was told from the perspective of Beau Jack's boxing career, but the more important story is the sad and painful legacy of racism and hypocrisy behind the history of the Masters. I don't think CBS will touch it for fear of losing the television rights for the event. But I think it would be right for the club to openly acknowledge the shadowy and racist side of it's legacy and distance itself from a past where the veneer was never to be pierced lest the substance be open to genuine scrutiny.