Check Calendar: Hootie’s Stuck in a Time Warp

The traffic outside stretched for miles, past bible stores and chicken joints and rain-soaked hustlers begging for tickets.

“We are a private club ... “ said Hootie Johnson.

The crowd inside numbered thousands, filling the courtyard, wallpapering the fairways, lining up two dozen deep for the men’s room.

“A group getting together periodically for camaraderie....”

There were camera towers in the pine trees and microphones in the azaleas and satellite dishes in the parking lot.

“Just as thousands of clubs and organizations do all over America....”

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On a stormy, surreal Masters eve, the impossibility of this feud between the world’s oldest man named Hootie and the women banned from membership in his golf club became clear.

Activists are protesting in 2003.

Hootie is hunkered down in 1950.

Activists are preaching with words like diversity and inclusion.

Hootie, 72, is listening with guffaws, lightly calling it “the wimmin issue.”

Activists are claiming that, although it’s a private club, Augusta National is public domain because it is host of this country’s most famous golf tournament.

Hootie talks about his tunamint as if it’s a crawfish boil or quilting bee.

“Our private club does not discriminate.... Single gender is an important fabric on the American scene,” he said. “There are thousands and thousands all across America. Both genders. Health clubs, sewing circles, Junior League.”

Pass the thread, Tiger.

In an interview room lined by dozens of men in green jackets -- the ultimate throwback jerseys -- Augusta’s chairman conducted his annual news conference Wednesday with a mixture of defiance and daffiness.

He challenged his critics. He scolded a reporter. He bragged about being spurned by his wife and daughters. Like a failing Civil War general, he even vowed to fight the issue beyond the grave.

“I do want to make one point, though,” Johnson said at the end of the 25-minute circus. “If I drop dead, right now, our position will not change on this issue. It’s not my issue alone.”

His face turned red. He began pointing to the ground.

“I promise you what I’m saying is, if I drop dead this second, our position will not change.”

All around him, the green jackets murmured their approval, an old-fashioned revival meeting insulated from all modern sensitivity.

Augusta National may indeed be pin-high to all that is magical about sports. But it is clearly a chip shot from reality.

“Take a question from that gal over there,” Johnson whispered to green-jacketed moderator Billy Payne, the architect of the bumbling 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

At that moment, the “gal” reporter decided to put her hand down, perhaps saving him further embarrassment.

Listen to Johnson and realize, the problem is not strictly gender, it’s generational. It’s not about nastiness, it’s about ignorance. Women’s leader Martha Burk is not only fighting a wall, she’s fighting a Stonewall.

“I don’t think I have experienced anything quite like this assault,” said Johnson, confusing inclusion with invasion.

How can Burk reasonably argue with a man who also compared the Masters to a birthday party?

“The other day, my wife had a birthday,” he said. “And we have this lake place, and my wife and the four daughters wanted to go to the lake place to celebrate her birthday. And they let me know that they really didn’t want me to come along with them.... It’s just a natural thing.”

Cut the cake, Ernie.

“It’s just been going on for centuries and centuries that men like to get together with men every now and then and women like to get together with women every now and then,” Johnson said. “And that’s just a simple fact of life in America.”

Yet there is no longer anything simple about this tournament.

It is no longer a neighborhood scramble, not when your neighborhood is the entire country. It has long since ceased being a rich white man’s field trip, not when the crowds are as diverse as they will be this weekend.

And would you call Tiger Woods’ intimidating relationship with his victims “camaraderie”?

Incidentally, even if Woods did have the gumption to take a stand on this issue, Johnson said he would punk him as Phil Mickelson never will.

“I won’t tell Tiger how to play golf if he doesn’t tell us how to run our private club,” he said.

Not so incidentally, two other guys who might have more influence, members Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, were shamefully silent Wednesday.

They both successfully fought to change Johnson’s decision to exclude aging former champions from the tournament. But in the matter of membership for women, they refused to lift one gold-ringed finger.

“I think about all the things that are happening in the world today and we have got enough controversy outside this golf tournament to be concerned about ... and shouldn’t have to be concerning ourselves with this,” said Palmer, embarrassingly playing the war card.

Then there was the disappointing Nicklaus, who said, “I’ve said all I’m going to say on it,” even though he has said little.

By the time stormy Wednesday ended, with the course under water and its image taking a bath, no more needed to be said.

This place isn’t going to change.

Hootie Johnson may have been a civil-rights proponent in his business suit, but underneath, he’s an old-fashioned hoot. His rich club members may be forward thinkers in their business lives, but the green jackets have turned them all into antiques.

And the right people don’t have the right stuff to persuade any of them to change.

Thus, an American treasure will begin today on a course that is not open to all Americans.

Indeed, a tradition like none other.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.