Membership
Augusta National Golf Club has about 300 members at any given time. Membership is strictly by invitation; there is no application process. In 2004, USA Today published a list of all the current members. Membership is believed to cost between $10,000 and $30,000 and annual dues were estimated in 2009 to be less than $10,000 per year.
Augusta only invited and accepted an African-American member for the first time in 1990 following a controversy at Shoal Creek Golf and Country Club. Shoal Creek, an all-white golf club in Alabama, also refused membership to black players and faced demands that the PGA Championship not be held there following racial comments by the club's founder. Chairman Billy Payne declined to discuss the club's then continued refusal to admit women in his 2012 pre-Masters press conference, and Augusta National subsequently extended membership to Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore on August 20, 2012.
Read more about this topic: Augusta National Golf Club
Famous quotes containing the word membership:
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)