When the U.S. men's pro-golf tour vowed last summer to stop holding its tournaments at clubs that discriminated on the basis of race, the decision was hailed as somewhat akin to Jackie Robinson's arrival in major-league baseball in 1947. The Professional Golfers' Association heard a sudden outcry against holding the 1990 championship at all-white Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham -- and against the widely known but long-ignored fact that 17 of its 39 tour courses were at private clubs with no black members. The P.G.A. quickly imposed antibias rules, and Shoal Creek admitted its first black as an "honorary" member. Within months the women's and senior pro tours and the U.S. Golf Association, which sponsors the U.S. Open and Amateur tournaments, followed suit.
Cynics said the repentant parties were probably motivated by money: image- sensitive corporations and TV networks provide most of pro golf's cash prizes, and the controversy prompted sponsors like IBM to yank $2 million in advertising from ABC's P.G.A. championship telecast. Whatever the impetus, the response prompted such seasoned observers as Arthur Ashe, the Wimbledon tennis champion and historian of black athletics, to predict sweeping change at exclusive clubs. Said Ashe: "In two or three years it is going to be completely different."
A year later, however, it is disappointingly the same. Says Calvin Peete, the foremost black pro: "Shoal Creek really did not have much impact." The nation's private golf clubs -- symbols of power and privilege at play, manicured enclaves of racial, religious and sexual discrimination -- show few signs of more than token reform.
To be sure, at least five all-white clubs opted to change behavior, including Crooked Stick in Carmel, Ind., which will be host to the 1991 P.G.A. championship next month. But four of those five have admitted one black each, and the fifth, Baltusrol, in Springfield, N.J., has pledged only to comply with the racial rules by its date for playing host to the U.S. Open in 1993.
Worse, these compliant clubs are in the minority. At least eight others gave up major championships rather than meet the rules, although a few have since begun to admit blacks and can regain eligibility. The St. Louis Country Club in Ladue, Mo., ceded the 1992 Women's Amateur Championships, ostensibly because it is renovating its greens. The Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Ill., relinquished the 1993 Walker Cup. Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pa., took in a few blacks as junior members in recent months but withdrew from the 1993 P.G.A. championship because it could not guarantee that such members would move up to full voting status by then. The Merion Golf Club in nearby Ardmore concluded that it would not be integrated in time for the U.S. Women's Open in 1994.
That is apparently typical: industry experts estimate that three-quarters of the nation's 5,232 private golf and country clubs have no black members. Among 74 private clubs in the Chicago area, only 10 say they have black members, and only 26 enroll women. In the moneyed Westchester County suburbs of New York, only 11 of the 39 clubs have black members. In metropolitan Detroit, the tally is 11 of 38.