Condi Joins Shoal Creek; Next Stop, ANGC Green Committee

First, she'll be gnawing on cigars in the Shoal Creek lounge, going all 18 with the boys and telling fart jokes. Next thing you know, Condoleeza Rice'll be up on the podium Wednesday of Masters week, clad in green, telling the assembled scribes that if we don't narrow the fairways and grow more rough the distance explosion smoking gun will come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Jaime Diaz notes the surprising news and what a nice show of progress...assuming this wasn't just a move to help Shoal Creek get back into the major championship picture. So cynical, I know. After all, Condi summers in Birmingham for all I know.

But even better, the news gives Jaime a chance to remind us it was only 19 years ago that some really backwoods good ole boys were hosting majors!

It took a good reporter, Joan Mazzolini of the Birmingham Post-Herald, to ask Thompson the right questions. With little knowledge of golf but possessing a keen eye for cultural dissonance, Mazzolini used the occasion of a major championship coming to Birmingham to embark on a story of the exclusionary practices at the city's private clubs. In her 90-minute interview with Thompson, she combined an engaging conversational style with a direct line of questioning to get forthright and ultra-revealing answers.

Mazzolini now works at the Cleveland Plain Dealer as a business reporter. "Who would have thought Condoleezza Rice and Shoal Creek?" she said upon learning the latest. "But you know, maybe I shouldn't be surprised, because I found the people in Birmingham were really affected by what happened, and really thoughtful about what it meant. And a lot of things are different. I mean, golf has Tiger Woods. And the country elected Barack Obama. I'm sure Shoal Creek changed some minds for the better."

Comments

[Polictical Correctness is a crime]

Who cares where the hell she plays golf?

[thusgone]

can someone please explain how deigning to allow the former secretary of state into your club is a groundbreaking social justice move?

[blader]

I can honestly say I didn't see that one coming

[RM]

Heck, Birmingham is just 2 1/2 hours away...and I had forgotten Shoal Creek even existed. I certainly don't here it mentioned 'round these here parts. Perhaps they did this just to get some attention. Can anybody here describe the quality of the course? Who designed it?

[G. Harding Warren]

Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, was she not?

[Claude]

Ordinarily I'd think this was a nice thing and then I remember that she presided over the worst debacle in American history since the War Between the States and then my teeth start grinding.

[Ky Laffoon's Ghost]

Wonder what Hall Thompson thinks? I guess the good people of Birmingham do this sort of thing now. And good for them. The course is a Nicklaus design and has hosted 2 PGAs and one US Amateur. Buddy Alexander won the US Am there in 1986. Trevino won the PGA in 1984 and Wayne Grady(!) in 1990. The 1990 Championship was the notorious one due to Hall Thompson's remarks. The TV coverage is most memorable because the only sponsor seemed to be Gold Bond Medicated Powder after practically everyone else abandoned the telecast. I'm ashamed to admit that I remember that, whether it is true or not. LOL.

[court]

good lord - this was a story 25 years ago, not last week

I would love to know what "the biggest debacle in American history since the war between the states" would be.

[The DA]

WHo was her sponsor, Dick Cheney's shooting buddy?

[jimbob]

i was there in 84 for trevino's win. i was pretty young, but i remember liking the course

[Hawkeye]

I was 14 and on the other side of the Atlantic, so I didn't hear much of the debate. But even without the controversy, the 1990 PGA would still probably have been the most underwhelming major of the last 25 years... Boring course, boring climax, boring winner. Sorry, Wayne.

[T Money]

"she presided over the worst debacle in American history since the War Between the States"

"WHo was her sponsor, Dick Cheney's shooting buddy?"

Wow these comments stay on the board, yet my mild rejoinder gets removed? I mostly love your blog Geoff, but this is a big disappointment. Your biases shine through.

Tom

[Geoff]

T Money,
That's why it's called GeoffShackelford.com. I didn't want to have a Barack Obama race discussion here, and that's what you were trying to start. It had nothing to do with the topic at hand, Ms. Rice.

[T Money]

Sheesh give me a break. Shoal Creek was all about race. You're missing the point, the President would not even acknowledge the former president's analysis- if that's what you would call it. How do you know I was trying to start a 'race discussion'? What an odd thing to say.

Just looking for some balance on the ad hominems.

Have a nice day. Tom

[Geoff]

Jimmy Carter and Barrack Obama don't have anything to do with Condi Rice joining a club, and by bringing it up you are trying to open up the conversation to a variety of off-topic debates that aren't what this site is about.

[Rosyln]

T Money - take the angry white guy somewhere else. I commend Geoff for not letting topics veer off course. It's why the comments on this site are actually highly readable most of the time.

[Claude]

I take it back. Condi had nothing to do with Vietnam.

[Taylor Anderson]

OK - what does Dick Cheney and the Iraq War have to do with Condi Rice joining a golf club?

And I don't see why you can't link Jimmy Carter's recent comments on racism, particularly in the South, with a black woman joining a southern club at the center of a very infamous race discussion in the sport's history. Seems rather apropos.

[Taylor Anderson]

By the way Geoff, Barack Obama is mentioned by name in the article and your quoted portion of it above.

[Claude]

"OK - what does Dick Cheney and the Iraq War have to do with Condi Rice joining a golf club?"

My point in alluding the Iraqi war seems obvious. She might not have the architect of the $1.3 trillion debacle, but she was a cheerleader. She spread misinformation to get it going. It's now part of her legacy.

Now, if she were a member of my club, I'd look forward to a chance to sidle up and engage her in conversation. Despite my anger over that economy-killing war, I don't view her as a pariah. There are some others in that old regime that I'll never forgive. But Condi? I don't know, there's something in her parochial-school demeanor that disarms me.

I would guess that this has been considered by the elders at Shoal Creek. "Hey, what about Condi Rice? She's OK, right? She's not going to go all Buchanan on us, is she?"

I'd like to THINK that the race thing is moving away from slowly in our rear-view mirrors. But clearly it's not, and that's tragic.

We live in high-anxiety times and don't need any more high-anxiety provocateurs whipping up the froth.
My reservations about her had to do with her questionable record.

[F. X. Flinn]

I shared a flight back to DC about 15 years ago with a gentleman who was the executive director of an educational organization, and because he was black and about 10 years older I asked if he'd been involved in the civil rights movement. He had been, with SNCC, and had experienced it all. But he didn't want' to talk about the marches, he wanted to tell me about growing up in Birmingham, where the steel industry meant there was a large middle-class black community and how he and his peers were, in retrospect, just typical American middle class kids who couldn't believe the unfairness of the Jim Crow world they found themselves in. Birmingham youth fueled the civil rights movement and everything about Shoal Creek and its place in the long struggle for justice benefits from this insight.