Big Disappointments for Burk and Woods

Before Tiger Woods disappeared and lesser mortals played like gods with their hair on fire, Martha Burk made a pitiful little speech all screechy about Augusta National Golf Club’s failure to admit women to membership.

Suitably, Burk’s presence drew a load of loons to a fire ant pasture near the club, all there to exercise their right to be as stupid as possible at high volume.

Which is how Sister Georgina Z. Bush walked the barren ground and came to say, “But I must let people know about George Bush.”

And how the dwarfish, hawk-nosed Georgina, who had come from California, came to be in the company of a beefy police lieutenant named Johnny Whittle.

And how the cop told the drag queen dressed in American flags with red, white and blue paint on his face, “Move along now, just move along,” as he Southern-sheriff’d the queen right along.

Burk’s case against the golf club once had credibility. Discrimination is wrong in public affairs, and Chairman Hootie Johnson’s claim to privacy is diminished by his club’s staging of the Masters tournament every April.

But by the time Burk had huffed and puffed the issue beyond recognition, she could rustle up just 30 or 40 mindless supporters for her harridan’s harangue among the fire ants.

The bumbling Burkites paled in the shadow of more than 130 Georgia police officers who arranged 100 squad cars in circles and rows so neatly that San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Scott Ostler decided, “It’s ‘Uncle Bubba’s Used Police Car Lot.’ ”

Mostly, though, as cameo performers in this Mel Brooks comic opera, we media types chatted up the stars, such as Elvis.

“I’m here because this event seemed to have everything but an Elvis sighting,” said the King, dazzling in fringed white leather and dead-possum toupee. “I have one thing to say to Martha Burk and Hootie Johnson.” And here Mack Gaddy, an investment advisor from Charlotte, N.C., struck a Presleyan pose and sang (?), “It’s NOW or NEVER ... “

So many loons: An environmentalist in a “Golf is Vile” T-shirt ranted against fertilizer.

Two rabbit-eared radio deejays stuffed balloons under dresses, slathered on brothel-red lip paint and declared themselves “Burk’s Bunnies.”

A rat-faced loser, “the one-man Ku Klux Klan group,” was glum because Jesse Jackson didn’t show; perhaps Jesse’s demeaning-debacle alarm finally went off.

Anne Lattimore made sense.

“Honk for Hootie,” her sign said, and many a passing car did.

“I’m standing up for real women,” the South Carolina artist said. “Real women don’t have to bully their way in to anything. Queen Victoria and Cleopatra weren’t bullies. These Burk women are soft and whiny women.”

Back to golf, where early in the week Tiger Woods picked up his three zillionth you’re-a-great-player trophy and immediately headed for the exit, his wrinkled, beige linen suit flapping from air rushing by -- when he heard a voice that brought him up short, that voice booming, “Hey, boy!”

With a smile, Woods made a hairpin turn and leaned down to whisper in Arnold Palmer’s ear, perhaps about how good it was to see Palmer at Augusta for his 49th Masters tournament -- a streak that began even before Earl Woods met Kultida, a saucy little woman from Thailand who would become the mother of a boy she named Eldrick and Earl named Tiger.

He’s 27 years old now, Tiger is, a man. The Man.

Tom Callahan’s brilliant new book, “In Search of Tiger,” quotes Earl at a Tiger clinic, “Let me introduce a young whippersnapper who’s never been spanked.”

Tiger says, “He’s right. He never had to spank me growing up as a kid. Because Mom beat the hell out of my ass. I’ve still got the handprints.”

The old Army colonel and Green Beret is the family sentimentalist. His wife says in charming, fractured English, “Old man is soft. He cry. He forgive people. Not me. I don’t forgive anybody.”

Over time, Tiger came to embrace some maternal suggestions: “Go after them; kill them. Go for their throat. Don’t let them up. When you’re finished, now it’s sportsmanship.”

Such was the plan in this Masters. Tida was there Sunday in her Thai-power red from top to bottom, her face hidden by a bonnet and sunglasses, there to see her child throw yet another cryonic chill on the world’s Mattiaces and Maggerts, Weirs and Mickelsons.

As Callahan’s rich reporting proves that the more likely Green Beret in the family is the little woman, it also shows her with more than a dollop or two of pride. For her refrain, apt in either victory or defeat, is, “What you think of my Tiger now?”

Woods started the Masters with as bad a day as he can have. He made it to the final two days only with a heroic par on the second round’s last hole.

In the third round, he did work so near perfect only he can do it, moving from 43rd place to fifth. Come Sunday, he expected to win.

“I know how to win major championships,” he’d said the day before, a shot across the leaders’ bow.

But for the first time with a major victory in reach, he made nothing happen.

Stepped on no one’s throat. Let everybody up.

Sportsman, not killer.

Not good.