Augusta National Member Resigns

The former television executive who is the first known Augusta National Golf Club member to resign in protest of the club’s lack of female membership has at least one important admirer:

The world’s best golfer.

Tiger Woods said Tuesday that former CBS chief executive Thomas H. Wyman, the first known defector from the exclusive club, should be applauded for his sincerity.

“You have to admire him for what he did,” Woods said at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, where he is the host of the Target World Challenge.

Wyman, 72, a club member for 25 years, submitted his resignation from Augusta in a Nov. 27 letter to club chairman Hootie Johnson. In a broadcast interview Tuesday night, he told CNN’s Connie Chung that it was a decision he’d been “brooding over for several months.”

He said the sentiment for change, Johnson’s delay in adding a female member and the questions by “women’s groups” about “why the club has been so out of touch with the times” were contributing factors.

Before his resignation, Wyman said he exchanged letters with Johnson and was told the addition of a female member was not scheduled.

“What once appeared [as] the inevitability of women joining ... Hootie Johnson has made clear there is no fixed plan,” Wyman said. “The institution is drawing inward.”

Wyman, who ran CBS from 1979-86, said he respects the club’s right to assert privacy “unless there are some overriding considerations, and in this case there are. [Augusta] is a shrine, it’s a model, and its image is being chopped down by the day by policies that are so far out of touch with today.”

Wyman’s resignation was first reported Monday in a New York Times story in which he was quoted calling Augusta’s stand on female membership “pigheaded” and said “a large number of members, at least 50 to 75, who believe it is inevitable that there will be and should be a woman member.”

Those numbers are in stark contrast to an estimate Johnson made in an interview last month when he said “99%” of the about 300 club members agreed with Augusta’s membership policy.

Johnson was not available for comment Tuesday. Augusta National officials said Wyman’s move would not sway the club’s position to admit women members in its own time. In a brief written statement, the club stated its intention to “stand firm” and expressed disappointment “that Mr. Wyman has chosen to publicize a private matter.”

Augusta National does not have exclusionary policies, but the fact that it has no female member has been a hot topic since June, when Martha Burk, head of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, sent Johnson a letter urging the club to move quickly toward admitting a female member.

Wyman said he would encourage active corporate leaders who are Augusta National members to break their silence on the matter and demand a change. “My hope and expectation is that ... the good ol’ boys club will join the 21st century,” he told Chung.

He compared the need for a female member to the 1990 addition of a first black member at Augusta National. “The parallel with the situation is absolute,” Wyman said. “We were forced to invite members [and] it was done quickly and gracefully. It could be done precisely the same way with the women.”

Around Augusta, callers to an afternoon radio show did not mince words in bidding good riddance to Wyman’s membership. Some called to say that any member who speaks publicly should be expelled. Others suggested their own female candidates -- including Anna Nicole Smith and RuPaul -- who might be admitted in order to best anger feminist protesters.

Standing outside the banquet hall he owns across the street from the club’s entrance, Terry Wick seemed baffled.

“To just drop your membership?” he said. “That’s a slap in the face to Augusta.”

Back in Thousand Oaks, Woods reaffirmed his position that he believes a woman should be invited to join the club, but that he does not have a vote in the matter.

Wyman has called upon both Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus to publicly support the campaign for Augusta to admit a woman member.

Burk said she respected Wyman for mentioning Palmer and Nicklaus, adding, “It’s time somebody challenged these people besides the NCWO. And Tim Finchem and the [PGA] Tour are still the biggest hypocrites in the mix.”

The PGA Tour has a policy not to stage events at clubs that discriminate, but says it has no contractual deal with Augusta National.

Palmer, who was at his home near Orlando, Fla., refused to comment through a spokesman. However, he said recently that he was unsure what his role would be. “I don’t think I can lend anything to help the situation,” Palmer said.

Nicklaus was traveling and unavailable for comment, according to a spokesman for Golden Bear International.

However, the spokesman released a statement from Nicklaus.

“I sympathize greatly with it ... “ Nicklaus said in the statement. “But it is not my deal.”

Wyman’s action was significant because of his long association with Augusta National as well as his connection with CBS, according to Burk.

“It was a strong memo that ‘Guys, you’re not doing it right’ and ‘We wouldn’t do this under my watch,’ ” she said.

CBS sources say the network has no plans to change course regarding its broadcast of the Masters and insiders said they do not view Wyman’s resignation from the club as turning up the heat on the debate. A network spokesperson said, “CBS will broadcast the Masters in April” and declined to further comment.

Media consultant Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports, said that even if the network wanted to pressure Augusta into considering a female member, it can’t.

“There’s no leverage here,” he said. “CBS doesn’t have a position that would allow it to get involved in this controversy. They have a one-year rights deal and, in my view, there would be no difficulty with the Masters finding another network to cover the event.”

Asked about the reaction CBS has received over this, Pilson said: “I’ll only confirm they’re not getting any phone calls. There’s no public outcry here. And I don’t believe their affiliate stations are getting any pressure.”

Pilson described Wyman, whom he worked for in the early 1980s, as “an excellent athlete” who, by definition, is a 15-handicap or less golfer, because that’s a requirement for membership.

“I know he was proud of his membership,” Pilson said. “He was a member during a period of time he was chairman at CBS. He probably played three or four times a year, which is about what the members do.”

Jim Aisner, a spokesman for Harvard Business School, where Wyman is a visiting scholar, described him as a “fine gentleman from the old school, a classic chief executive raised from the old-school path of where they come: [a private academy in] Andover (Mass.), Amherst (Mass.) College. And he was a Phi Beta Kappa.”

A spokesman for Delphi, the mobile electronics and transportation component technology company in which Wyman served as a lead director from 1999 until his March retirement, said Wyman’s detachment from a corporation illustrates the sincerity behind his resignation.

“I think it attests to the genuineness of his motives,” Delphi’s Steven Gaut said.

Citigroup chief executive Sanford Weill and U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive Lloyd Ward, Augusta National members who’ve publicly called for the club to add a female member, refused to comment on Wyman’s resignation.

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Times staff writers Ralph Frammolino and Sallie Hofmeister in Los Angeles and David Wharton in Augusta, Ga., contributed to this story.