The Battle for Augusta National: Hootie, Martha, and the Masters of the Universe

Great Book....relives and recounts one of the most intriguing political, cutural and sports controversies of our day....a very human accounting of Martha, Hootie and all those poor, somewhat innocent souls, caught up in their battle, a battle of The Hallowed Ways vs. the New Age. Fascinating book, especially the parts about the New York Times' (Howell Raines') agenda journalism and how the National as it is called took on Raines and the Times and "won." Has all the PR overtones of a Presidential campaign, only in the world of sport. Good book, even if the reader isn't a particulary big golf fan. Even a political junkie would enjoy this one...Give Mr. Shipnuck a birdie on this effort.

I live in Augusta, rent my house out during Masters Week, but don't play golf or belong to Augusta National. This book is well-written and fascinating, with a few flaws. The author tries to cover a lot of stories in one book: the sport of golf generally, Augusta National, the Masters, Hootie Johnson, Martha Burk, press coverage of the controversy (including the subsequent implosion of the New York Times), and the community of Augusta. The first six are well done (except he gives Martha Burk a pass -- she has some amazingly radical ideas and positions he did not cover) and is far too kind to her. (She vanished completely at the 2004 Masters, which he does not mention). The last topic fails miserably. The author does not understand the South or Southern hospitality. He is shocked that we have an old Confederate monument on Broad Street downtown. Well, show me a town in the South that doesn't! No one here, black or white, gets very excited about it and hasn't for decades. He does not understand (or make an effort to understand) the connections a Federal judge would legitimately have with the local community in a small town. He neglects the local angle to the story and distorts what he does not neglect. The book is full of careless editorial errors -- in one sentence he refers to Fort Dixon in New Jersey (which is actually Fort Dix) and Fort Devin Massachusets (Fort Devens), errors he could have corrected with minimal care, then jumps all over other writers for confusing Augusta National and Augusta Country Club. This kind of thing makes one wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the book, in the areas which I am not so familiar with. Overall a good read, and reasonably balanced.

This could have been a great book about the 2002-2003 PGA golf seasons and how the male-female tensions in the pro golf world reached a crescendo in 2003. Instead the author made it just about Martha Burke and Hootie Johnson, a few characters in the town of Augusta, Ga, and the NYTimes coverage of the event. He left out other hot golf gender issues of that time which set the context, not even mentioning Michelle Wie or Suzy Whaley, and giving the Annika Sorenstam story at Colonial a very cursory mention. All of these stories are linked, and influence each other, but the author completely missed the connection. Or he chose to ignore them so he could also ignore the ultra-cozy relationship the golf press corps have with the tournament's they cover, and how greatly that influenced both the coverage of the 2002 Masters and the Martha Burke story, but every golf story before and since that time. He threw a few tiny pebbles at CBS for their lack of objectivity and more at the NYTimes but that is about it. How much was the author influenced by the special perks and free rounds of golf coming his way if a bit more journalism had been practiced? This is a good read for about half the book, but since the author ignored all these other factors that continued long past April 2003, the last half of the book reads more like a "where are they now" high school reunion newsletter. It has been 14 years since this book was written. How about an updated version that covers the bigger issues as well as reactions he got from first book? That is a book I would want to read.

This book should be required reading for every woman and girl in the business world. It explains how men secretlyconspire to keep women from the inner circles of power where millions of dollars in business is done when men play.Ostensibly it is about the Masters Golf tournament , but it could apply to big sports across America. Women aresystematically excluded from these portals of power and taxpayers pay when the boys in corporate America play.

Great long, long, long-form work by Alan Shipnuck (then) of Sports Illustrated. It's a glimpse of one of those rare moments in time when what was happening in the world of golf had relevance and significance in the wider world.