Augusta National faces a quandary

IBM holds a rarefied position in the Augusta, Ga., course. The company carries a hospitality cabin close to the 10th hole, beside co-sponsors Exxon Mobil Corp. and AT&T Inc. The companies' male CEOs happen to be in a position to don the club's signature green member blazers while hosting clients. Non-members, that do not wear the jackets, should be that has a member to visit the course or play a round.

"They have a dilemma on many levels," said Marcia Chambers, senior research scholar in law and journalist in residence at Yale University Law School. "If there was a tradition of certain TaylorMade RocketBallZ fairway wood CEOs, they should look with this new CEO in the same manner. One and only thing that produces her different is her gender."

Augusta, which owns and hosts the Masters, sets its own rules being a private club and has resisted calls for change in days gone by. Augusta did not have a black member until 1990, when it extended a party's invitation to Gannett Co. television President Ron Townsend, who still belongs.

Rometty, who will play golf, though not frequently, inherited the sponsorship from predecessor Sam Palmisano. IBM is featured within the tournament's TV commercials and runs its website, mobile-phone applications and media-center technology. Palmisano serves on Augusta's technology tournament committee. He remains IBM's chairman - a part Rometty is probably going and also to assume upon his retirement.

Steve Ethun, a Masters Tournament spokesman, declined to comment, citing an insurance plan that forbids membership-related discussions. Edward Barbini, a spokesman for IBM, also declined to comment. Augusta members are never officially identified beyond your Titleist 712 AP1 Irons exclusive greens; known members contacted just for this story declined to comment.

Entertaining clients on the Masters is "a very private party," said Casey Alexander, who analyzes the golf industry as a director of equity research at Gilford Securities Inc. "It's different than the Super Bowl or the Kentucky Derby. That you do not see those big corporate tents. You do not see logos lining the fairways that is certainly the way they want it."

Rometty's promotion puts the club and the company in a "interesting position" that's likely to end up tackled privately, said Patrick Rishe, a sports business professor at Webster University in St. Louis. Private clubs are "clever due to the language they use along with their rule books," and may even simply add the best to find the best executives of key sponsors, he was quoted saying.

Billy Payne, who succeeded William "Hootie" Johnson as chairman of the tournament along with the driver in 2006, has said he's got "no specific timetable" on possibly ending the all-male membership, that is enforced because the club was founded by Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts due to the first sort Fruitland Nurseries in 1933. The first discount golf clubs Masters Tournament occurred per year later, plus 1937 Augusta members began wearing green jackets - a trademark differentiator from guests and golf fans who buy tickets.

Augusta declined to supply a current membership list just for this story. A 2010 partial list obtained by Bloomberg News and 2004 documents authored by the Augusta Chronicle and USA Today show the last four IBM CEOs were members, beginning from John Opel, who ran the organization from 1981 to 1985 and died last year. John Akers, IBM's chief from 1985 to 1993, and Louis Gerstner, who helped turn around IBM as CEO from 1993 to 2002, also were members.