The Suits Behind the Green Jacket

Locals in Augusta call them “greencoats,” a reference to their Kelly-green sport coats with the curiously tacky club logo emblazoned on the breast. Only members (honorary and otherwise) may wear the jackets and only then while on club grounds. The only exception to that rule is made for the defending Masters champion, who may keep his coat for the year he defends, after which it goes into the closet back at the club.

It seems like a silly rule, with even sillier consequences. To run across Washington Road to the grocer while wearing the coveted coat could result in expulsion from the club, a fate those allowed to don the green jacket fear more than death.

The men who make and enforce these rules are, of course, the 300 or so members of the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters tournament. Wearing golf shirts and stately countenances to match their green jackets, this elite group hibernates behind the magnolias and dogwoods of its 365-acre golf oasis, only to come out once a year for the annual spring party.

Their by-laws (or customs, as they’re called in Augusta) require members to remain close-mouthed about what goes on inside the club. In fact, the mantra given to any and all questions is, “Mr. Jack Stephens is chairman of Augusta National, and he will address all issues relating to the club.”

But not really. The members at east Georgia’s most exclusive private establishment are secretive, clannish and some of the most powerful men in America. At least one presidency of the United States is beholden to the members at Augusta. They are also responsible for some of the TV policies of one major network, as well as a number of the standards of professional golf such as gallery ropes and red-numbered scoreboards that have become commonplace today.

While you rarely see the greencoats, during Masters week, when they do come out to see their shadows, you find that they look like typical, gray-haired, private-club golfers--no auras, halos, horns or tails. It could be a Chamber of Commerce cocktail party, were it not for the setting and the fact that the men in the green coats are calling all the shots.

Don’t be deceived. While the event they host is, by far, the most-anticipated golf tournament of the season, the players, advertisers, networks, U.S. Golf Assn., Royal & Ancient Golf Club and the PGA Tour have absolutely nothing to do with it. The members at Augusta National, the greencoats, try--with more than a little success--to control everything the public sees, hears, reads and thinks about their annual invitational tournament.

If you doubt that members of a golf club, no matter how good it might be, can wield that kind of power, look no further than the lap-dog treatment Augusta National and its members have always received from the media. Frank Deford, writer and HBO essayist, says “No sporting event in America, if indeed the whole world, has benefited from such a sweetheart press.”

Among those who fall duplicitously in lock step with whatever the members at Augusta say is CBS, the network that has been beaming the Masters into living rooms since 1958. As Deford puts it, “The Masters controls television in a fashion that would make Nikita Khrushchev raise up from his grave with envy.”

It has always been that way in Augusta. During the autocratic reign of the club’s first chairman, Clifford Roberts, Augusta National not only dictated policy to the media (including CBS), it controlled the amount of advertising the network would sell, whom they would sell it to and what the advertisers could say. When American Express dropped out as a sponsor, it was Roberts, not CBS, who replaced it with Cadillac. He made this change by calling Cadillac President Don Aherns and saying, “You’re it.” Cadillac, along with Traveler’s Insurance, has been “it” ever since.

Roberts also insisted that CBS severely limit commercial breaks during the Masters; the four minutes allowed per hour are by far the fewest in any major sporting event. But it wasn’t enough for the Masters to be essentially commercial-free; Roberts insisted in 1966 that CBS make a special announcement at the opening of every telecast advising viewers of the club’s benevolent commercial policy. At first, Roberts demanded that the network send Walter Cronkite down to Augusta for this 30-second plug. After more than a few coughs and throat-clearing grunts, CBS executives told Roberts that Cronkite was unavailable.

Not to be deterred, Roberts insisted that Alistair Cooke be sent down. Cooke declined. Worried that “Mr. Cliff,” as they called him, might blow a gasket if this problem were not remedied, CBS offered to send one of television’s entertainment icons, and a man who loved golf: Ed Sullivan. Roberts’ terse reply was, “Hell no. Sullivan uses monkeys in his program.”

Eventually, a little-known newsman from New York made the announcement, which has now been taken over by Augusta officials.

From the confines of his spartan apartment on the east end of the clubhouse, Roberts set the standard for the club’s relationship with CBS by examining every snippet of film and listening to every breath of commentary CBS offered during its annual telecasts.

And, like his response to the Ed Sullivan suggestion, Roberts’ reactions were neither mild nor cordial. The late Dave Marr recalled, “One year as he was reviewing the telecast on tape [Roberts] pointed to an announcer and grumbled that his hair was ‘askew.’ Can you imagine that? Askew!”

Many transgressions more oblique than out-of-place hair have irked the greencoats to action over the years. In 1994, Gary McCord made two obscure (and only marginally funny) references that didn’t sit well in Augusta. The first was when McCord, who hates cliches, tried not to say that Jose Maria Olazabal would be “dead” if his ball went behind the 17th green. McCord said, “If that ball rolls any further, it’s going to be down there with some body bags.” Later in the same telecast, McCord tried to describe the speed of Tom Lehman’s downhill putt at 17. Instead of saying “it’s slick,” or “this one’s like glass,” or any of a thousand cliches, McCord said, “These greens are so fast, they don’t mow them, they bikini-wax them.”

The members at Augusta National informed CBS that McCord was persona non grata, and if CBS expected to telecast the Masters in 1995, it had better leave their jocular golf personality at home. McCord hasn’t been back to Augusta, and contrary to earlier speculation that his sentence might be commuted, he won’t be there this year either.

McCord’s expulsion is nothing new, however. The Masters has banned such notable journalists as Frank Beard, Heywood Hale Broun and the venerable Jack Whitaker. How do they get away with it? Easy. In the 40 years since the tournament was first televised, Augusta National has insisted on a one-year-only contract with CBS, making the Masters the only major sporting event with a one-year network deal. This year, according to Golf Digest, networks will spend about $7 million for the right to jump through whatever hoops the greencoats set up, although the exact figure is closely guarded.

Former CBS sports president Bill McPhail said of the relationship, “The purpose of that one-year deal has been to say to CBS, “You play ball correctly, or you’re out on your tokus.”

It is the perfect threat. According to CBS commentator Jim Nantz, “If we weren’t televising this tournament, NBC, ABC, ESPN and Turner would be lined up to take our place.”

That has been enough to keep CBS brass in line for 40 years.

According to insiders, the relationship is likely to continue. “It’s become part of CBS’ corporate tapestry,” says long-time Masters producer Frank Chirkinian. “To lose the rights to the Masters would be like losing one of our children.”

Of the members at Augusta National, Chirkinian says, “There’s a total sense of power there. The greencoats know exactly what they want, and by golly, that’s the way it’s going to be.”

In fact, everything at the Masters occurs at the discretion and pleasure of the members, who will tell anyone willing to listen that if the tournament ever becomes a bother, they will simply quit having it. Former club chairman Hord Hardin stunned a CBS interviewer with that statement, but current chairman Stephens has backed it up. If the tournament becomes too much trouble, the members might choose not to have it. While the odds of there being no Masters are as great as CBS’ losing broadcast rights to QVC, the message is clear: This is the greencoats’ party; if you like it, fine; if you don’t like it, that’s also fine.

So, who are these guys in their green jackets, and how do they have so much power? In many ways the membership roster at Augusta National mirrors the Forbes 400, with a few noteworthy exceptions. All members at Augusta National are men. In fact, it wasn’t until 1989 that women were allowed on the second floor of the white plantation clubhouse that sits at the end of Magnolia Lane.

From 1934 until the fall of 1991, all members were white. They’re still mostly Protestant (although a few Jewish members have crept in since Clifford Roberts’ death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1977), but they’re all rich, and all obsessed with privacy.

Unlike most clubs, there is no membership application, no waiting list, and no membership director to guide you through the maze of joining. It’s widely believed that the club has 300 members, but no one at the club will confirm or deny that, and according to one former member, “It could be 290, or 312. Nobody outside the club really knows. Any member can float a name through the club for possible membership. The chairman circulates it around. If everyone agrees that the candidate fits in, then he’s extended an invitation to join. But if he owes one member $10 from 50 years ago, forget it.”

According to sources in Augusta, one such name recently floated for membership was that of Vernon Jordan, the friend of President Clinton now embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Recent events sank Jordan’s chances, and according to his office, “Mr. Jordan knows nothing about Augusta National.” The National refuses comment, as it does on all issues relating to the club.

Even if the latest scandal hadn’t derailed his chances, Jordan would have been a political lightweight compared to the crop of members that have passed through the gates at Augusta. In addition to current club chairman and billionaire investment banker Stephens (the Little Rock tycoon who helped elect Clinton in 1992), a quick scan of the membership roster shows such notable names as Warren Buffet, billionaire investment strategist; Robert Allen, outgoing president of AT&T; Carl Sanders, former Georgia governor; Hall Thompson, infamous Shoal Creek founder whose racial comments prompted a wave of desegregation in golf before the 1990 PGA Championship, and George Schultz, former U.S. secretary of state.

As impressive as it is, even this list pales in comparison to the political powerhouses who sipped drinks on the second-story veranda during the 1940s and ‘50s. Led by Roberts and with the help of the great amateur and Augusta National founder Bobby Jones, a group of die-hard Republicans decided in 1948 that the Democrats were destroying the country and a new, rugged, individualistic president was needed to bring America back from the brink of bureaucratic malaise. They chose Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.

At Roberts’ urging, Ike in 1948 went to Augusta, where Jones gave him golf clubs and lessons. Later that year, Ike was issued an invitation to join the National, and Roberts offered the general (whose military pension was $18,000 a year) investment advice and a few shares in a company that marketed Coca-Cola in South America. Ike accepted, and in 1949 he spent a month in Augusta, playing bridge and golf with Roberts and Augusta National members Pete Jones, Bob Woodruff, George Allen, Bill Robinson and Slats Slater. That group would later become known throughout the country as “Eisenhower’s gang.”

Roberts and the gang wrote speeches, raised money and ran Ike’s grass-roots, common-man campaign. With such heavy hitters as Louis “Bud” Maytag and Charles Wilson of General Motors on board, and with no independent counsel statute to hinder campaign finance, fellow members at Augusta assured Ike that his candidacy wouldn’t “be encumbered by a lack of fund-raising.”

Roberts told historian John Mason, “Pete [Jones] would regularly come over to my office and give $25,000 in currency. Pete and I were skirting around the fringes of the law, but everybody violated those rules so regularly every year and nobody went to jail for violating them, so neither Pete nor I worried too much.”

Ike visited Augusta throughout his presidency and Roberts visited the White House so often that he kept pajamas and a toothbrush in the Red Room. They remained close friends until Eisenhower’s death in 1969. For years, Roberts jokingly told Ike, “You can’t run the country without me.” That might have been an exaggeration, but Roberts did run Eisenhower’s personal finances until the president died, and he continued to manage all financial affairs for Eisenhower’s widow, Mamie.

Since then, presidents from Kennedy to Clinton have visited Augusta National, and while none have joined the exclusive Clan of the Green Jacket, it’s unclear if any since Ike have been invited. Like all things in Augusta, the club members won’t comment, and the presidents have chosen not to say.

Augusta this year will be as beautiful as ever. As Deford says, “No matter how beautiful the breathless CBS shills make it out to be, the place is more gorgeous yet.”

But as viewers from around the world tune in to this annual rite of spring, all need to be aware of what they’re watching. The commercial-free atmosphere, the drama, the beauty, the sanitized commentary (mentioning prize money or other tournaments--even the U.S. Open--is prohibited), and the poetic beauty of springtime Augusta are all wonderfully choreographed.

The drama of the tournament is unparalleled. The stately (albeit dull) green jacket ceremony conjures images of times long past and traditions too-often lost in modern athletics. But while the champions and the drama might change from year to year, one constant remains at the Masters no matter what happens on the golf course: The men in the green coats will continue to call all the shots.

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Steve Eubanks is author of “Augusta, Home of the Masters Tournament,” published by Rutledge Hill Press.