Quote:
Kansas City Country Club wouldn't let Tom Watson's wife join the club because she was Jewish...
This was not the case, jay, although Tom's former wife, Linda, was Jewish, and Tom did withdraw from the club for a few years in public protest of the club's ultra-secret membership committee and exclusionary membership policies -- and Jews were far from the only category of persons who were unwelcome there solely on the basis of social, racial, religious or gender classification. The club never admitted women to individual membership, although privileges were extended to widows of members.
Without going into detail, Tom paid a heavy personal price for his behavior. To his credit, his actions prompted other prominent club members to speak out and membership traditions at the club did change to at least a token degree.
Ironically, Tom later left his wife and took up with the former wife of a fellow tournament professional -- which estranged him from every family member he had failed to estrange the first time, including his children, and left his business manager between a rock and a hard place; he's his former brother-in-law. Not to mention many fellow professionals, who had long considered him loudly and self-righteously opinionated and a hypocrite. It is certainly true that he has evolved (or not) from a McGovern supporter in his youth to a present-day Rush Limbaugh devotee.
And, after his divorce, Tom quietly rejoined the Country Club.
It is also ironic, in my view, that Tom has long genuflected uncritically at the alter of Augusta, and led the charge to ban Gary McCord for an insufficiently respectful quip, although it would be difficult to imagine a less inclusive organization than the masters who bring us the Masters.
Mr Watson has always been a man of complexity and contradiction, in public and in private; he's a very interesting guy, as well as a transcendent competitor.