The Strange Tale of Aronimink Golf Club

Sometimes truth is stupidly stranger than fiction.

Take the Aronimink Golf Club, the site of this week’s AT&T tournament. When his reputation is resurrected, Tiger Woods will once again be the very visible host for the event.

Aronimink is a private club.

It was, according to a history written by the late Fred Byrod, who worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer for 40 years, incorporated in 1900 with 150 members.

There were six women on the first board of governors, and four men.

John M. Shippen, who was of mixed Shinnecock Indian and black parentage—a fact that caused a racial stir in the second U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in 1896—was their first professional.

Several professionals entered in the 1896 US Open threatened to withdraw if Shippen was allowed to play. 

The USGA, in keeping with their spirit of ignoring professional golfers' complaints, paid no attention and assigned him a tee time. Shippen, who was 17 years old at the time, tied for fifth place.

Fast-forward 90 years.

The 1990 PGA Championship is held at Shoal Creek GC in Birmingham, Alabama.

The founder of Shoal Creek, a private club, was asked about the composition of its membership, and he gave an unfortunate answer causing an uproar that was felt across the country.

The sport of golf had to take a strong look in the mirror.

What it saw was exclusion of non-white, non-male people from membership at most clubs.  

Sponsors threatened to pull out of the PGA unless black members were added to Shoal Creek's membership, and this was less than a month before the tournament.

It was a social and business calamity of the first order.

A solution was found when Louis Willie, a black businessman who was president of an insurance company in Birmingham, and Hall Thompson, founder of Shoal Creek, struck a deal to allow him to become the club’s first black member.

It was done against Willie’s wife’s wishes at the time.

She was tired of her husband being the first black whatever it was people needed at the time. 

No one can argue against the right to have a private club, but when a private club holds a public event, such as the PGA Championship, it falls under the civil rights laws.

The laws prohibit discrimination in a variety of ways including sporting events.

This means that if you open up your doors to the general public, whether you hold Monday pro-ams for non-members or the US Open, you cannot have policies of membership discrimination at your club.

So you can be private and discriminate.

Or you can be private, but occasionally open to the public if you have members of a variety of flavors.

At least, that is what evolved out of Shoal Creek. Until then, nobody held golf accountable to the laws of the land.

You can look up The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and see sporting events among the heretofores and whereases.

Theoretically, this applies to women as well as persons of all colors, but usually women are last on the list or ignored.

Just ask any one who has faced this in any part of her life, and she will give you an earful, particularly the pre-Title IX women.

For one stop shopping on the subject, call Martha Burke. OK, stop screaming at me. She doesn’t get golf to save her soul, but she does understand discrimination against women.

When what came to be known as the “Shoal Creek Incident” occurred, there were several tournaments, including PGA Championships and US Opens and PGA Tour events that were set to host tournaments down the road. 

Because of Shoal Creek, future host clubs and courses for the PGA Championship and other PGA of America events were given a period of time to make policy changes in their memberships or opt out of hosting the golf tournaments.

Oak Tree Golf Club, a men’s club, which had hosted a US Amateur and a PGA Championship, and Aronimink GC, a private club which had hosted a previous PGA Championship and USGA events, were on the list.

Oak Tree and Aronimink opted out of hosting PGA Championships in the early 1990s because they wanted to remain private and they did not want to scramble for members or change their policies

They were not alone.

Butler National, former host to the Western Open, another men's club, opted out of hosting a PGA Tour event. Cypress Point, originally developed, owned and created by a woman, Marion Hollins, left the AT&T Pro-Am.

There may be others, but those are the most notable.

Some were saved from making a choice by the creation of the TPC Courses, which gave many old line clubs time to reconfigure their thinking and their membership policies.

Even Augusta National invited some black members, but as yet they have no women currently on the roster.

However, one unsubstantiated report indicates that in the early years the club in fact had women members.

The original stock or membership certificate for the club shows women on the tee. (I have seen it.)

It would be easy to believe that Marion Hollins was a member, if there were any women on the membership list, since she and Bobby Jones were contemporaries.  Apparently this is something ANGC does not want to discuss, although a historical fact or two like that could have saved Hootie Johnson a lot of heartache.

Now, Aronimink GC has a much more strictly golf-related history, and no doubt we will all find out those details this week. We will hear about the Donald Ross design, not a mailed in one mind you. We will find out that most famous players of the early 20th century played it at one time or another.

We will learn that in 1962, it hosted the PGA Championship. That in 2003 it was home to the Senior PGA Championship.

But afer 1990, it also became an unfortunate participant in the biggest social change golf has seen since the 1960. And it also became a part of the solution because it would not have hosted the 2003 Senior PGA without making changes.

It would not currently be the venue for the AT&T National if it had not revised its membership policies.

Maybe in 2011 Aronimink GC will once again have six women on the board of directors.

But don’t hold your breath on that one.