Legacy of golf's Iron Lady

That is because this place is not playing reluctant host this year to Dr Martha Burk, outspoken advocate of women's rights and chair of the Washington-based National Council of Women's Organisations.

Last April, Burk marched south with the intention of picketing the gates of Augusta National. Her aim was to protest against the club's allmale membership policy and humiliate its chairman, Hootie Johnson, into a change of policy.

But she was outflanked by the authorities, who relegated the feminist invaders to a field not even within loud-hailing distance of the golf tournament. If anyone was humiliated it was Burk, whose small group of protesters found themselves in the company of a white knight of the Klu Klux Klan, an Elvis impersonator, a drag queen and more police officers than the whole circus put together.

But if Burk is gone this year - "why go back down there and be stuck in a mud hole a mile away" - she is not entirely forgotten.

Alan Shipnuck, the award-winning journalist with Sports Illustrated magazine, has written The Battle for Augusta National, a critical examination of the controversy.

Shipnuck's conclusion is that while some people may regard the story as being over, in reality it is just beginning. That is because golf, by tradition, is slow to adopt cultural change. Shipnuck believes Augusta National will eventually admit women, but not for at least a decade.

Meanwhile, the battle for the moral high ground has already claimed casualties. Shipnuck told Standard Sport: "Everyone the story touched was somehow diminished. It was a laundry list of high-profile names who were all sucked into this, and all came out the worse for wear."

He reveals the full extent of the vigorous public relations campaign mounted by the golf club and led by Jim McCarthy, a senior political spin doctor hired from Washington.

McCarthy's brief was to promote the club's right to run itself as it saw fit. But, to highlight what he was up against, the New York Times produced more than 40 articles about the Burk-Johnson feud between July and November 2002, most taking Burk's side.

The newspaper was particularly critical of Woods's failure to make a stand on behalf of gender discrimination. As Shipnuck points out, Woods did speak out about racial discrimination in a series of Nike advertisements.

He said: "In fact, Woods is very conservative. Look at his best friend, Mark O'Meara, a middle-aged white man. That's the kind of personality he gravitates to."

But Woods will not be appearing in any advertisements during the Masters coverage on US television.

For the second consecutive year, Johnson has declared his tournament commercial-free so corporations previously associated with the event are not drawn into the membership controversy. As Shipnuck concludes: "Every hour that goes by without a word from Coca-Cola is a reminder of Burk's influence."