Hootie’s Paradox

From his wood-paneled second-floor office, only a chip shot from the driving range at Augusta National Golf Club, it’s easy for William Woodward “Hootie” Johnson to look out his window and watch the thousands of spectators pour through the main gates on their way to watch the Masters tournament.

What has never been easy for Johnson, at least until recently, is to admit mistakes. When a question about his decision-making as Augusta National’s chairman came up at his annual meeting with the media at last year’s Masters, Johnson paused.

Unsmiling, he set his jaw and said once a decision is made, it’s over and done with.

“We don’t look back,” Johnson said.

He has been looking back a lot more often lately.

It all began a month or so earlier when Johnson sent letters to older, past champions, suggesting they no longer play the Masters. The reaction from such golfers as Gary Player, Billy Casper and Gay Brewer was anger and resentment. Johnson later said he had made a mistake.

Johnson came up with another rule to take effect in 2004, again aimed at the older past champions. He called for an age limit of 65 and mandated that each Masters competitor must play at least 15 sanctioned tournaments the year before.

Johnson looked back at that one too and realized the rule would end the Augusta careers of both Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer because they don’t play 15 sanctioned events.

So he changed the rule to 10 tournaments, then last week changed it back to the way it was originally, so that all past champions have a lifetime exemption.

“We will count on our champions to know when their playing careers at the Masters have come to an end,” Johnson said.

The question now is whether there’s anything else we can count on Johnson to change.

There is only one issue out there for Johnson, but it’s the mother of them all, the one that has shadowed him and covered both the Masters and Augusta National in controversy since July 9, when he released a strongly worded statement to Martha Burk of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, refusing her request that the club admit its first female member.

So when the 67th Masters begins this week, steeped in tradition and history, there still won’t be a female member at Bobby Jones’ powerful old club, the one that Johnson now rules. Burk’s rhetoric has been rather pointed and none too conciliatory to Johnson, who has been portrayed in largely unflattering terms as some kind of backwoods chauvinist pig, out of step with reality.

How this happened to Johnson puzzles many who know the 72-year-old former banking executive from Columbia, S.C., in an entirely different light.

Last October, Johnson invited the University of South Carolina’s golf team to play 18 holes with him at Augusta National. The women’s team.

“It was incredible,” Coach Kristi Coggins said. “From the minute we drove through the gate, we were treated like queens. Hootie Johnson was just so gracious.”

Augusta National places no restrictions on tee times for female guests who are invited to play, nor are they barred from the clubhouse. Women played more than 1,000 rounds at Augusta in 2001.

“That says a lot about his attitude,” said Coggins, who used Ben Hogan’s old locker.

But what did it say about Johnson’s attitude when he fired off that angry letter to Burk nine months ago, accusing her of trying to force her view about membership at “the point of a bayonet”?

I.S. Leevy Johnson was one of two African Americans elected to the legislature in South Carolina in 1970, helped in a large part by the backing of Johnson.

Says Leevy Johnson about Hootie Johnson: “You can’t intimidate him. He’s been a fighter all his life.”

Johnson was born in Augusta, at University Hospital, in 1931, the same year construction began on Augusta National. At 4, he saw his first Masters.

A childhood playmate gave Johnson his distinctive nickname and Hootie started to learn golf when he was 8, at nearby Augusta Country Club, separated from Augusta National only by a row of trees, a fence and the most famous tournament in the world.

Johnson’s father was a banker and moved the family to Greenwood, S.C., with a goal to build a statewide bank.

Hootie was a football player in high school, a tailback, and played fullback at South Carolina from 1950-52. His eyesight was so poor, Johnson had to wear glasses under his helmet.

Johnson quickly had two careers going. At 25, he was elected to the South Carolina legislature. His father died in 1961 and Hootie became the youngest bank president in South Carolina in 1965 at the age of 34. The bank, Bankers Trust, eventually merged with one owned by Hugh McColl, former chairman of BankAmerica, and NationsBank was formed. In 1998, it merged with Bank of America and the statewide bank that became a multistate bank was now the nation’s largest bank.

Johnson has been chairman of NationsBank’s executive committee since 1986. Along the way, he also has become a multimillionaire.

Johnson has been a member at Augusta National since 1968. He was named vice president in 1975 and became the club’s fifth chairman in 1998. As Johnson’s influence increased at Augusta National, he became a power broker and a leader in other areas as well.

Johnson’s civil rights record is something of which he is proud. In 1968, he helped persuade South Carolina to pay for an undergraduate business program at predominantly African American South Carolina State. He invited M. Maceo Nance, South Carolina State’s president, to sit on the board of directors at Bankers Trust. It was the first time an African American had served in such a position in South Carolina.

Johnson also influenced the organization of the first Urban League chapter in South Carolina and chaired a committee that helped elect two black legislators to the General Assembly. One of them was Leevy Johnson, now an attorney in Columbia.

Maybe that’s why Leevy Johnson doesn’t understand how Johnson is being characterized in the controversy with Burk.

“His history is one of inclusion, not exclusion,” Leevy Johnson said.

It was Hootie Johnson who co-chaired a $300-million fund-raising effort at the University of South Carolina and persuaded the chief executive of Rainwater Inc., an investment company in New York, to give $25 million. That CEO was Darla Moore. The business school at South Carolina is now the Darla Moore School of Business.

Says Moore: “He can think outside the box. He actually is quite progressive.”

In the ongoing controversy about female members at Augusta National, Johnson has never been referred to that way.

Johnson has steadfastly maintained that the issue is about First Amendment rights, something he feels strongly about and an area where he refuses to compromise.

If his eyesight was bad at fullback, he’s still not nearsighted about the women’s issue at Augusta. Or so Johnson says. Johnson claims that the club will indeed invite its first female member, but that will happen on the club’s timetable, not Burk’s.

Chances are this is one issue where there’s no looking back.