What does the story say?
Essentially, it said everything last year's story said. The club looked into changing its all male policy. It hired a firm to survey members on the issue and there wasn't enough interest to merit a vote, in the eyes of those in charge. My friend Bob Clifford, widely regarded as the top lawyer in town was a prime source. So was Mike Keiser. Each is a former member, with Clifford resigning a few months ago, having tired of the inability to have open dialogue on the subject at the club. A current member is quoted anonymously.
As for the writer's agenda, he is trying to shine a light on why the only potential Open site in town won't change it's policy despite the fact that it was built to host big pro events. Nothing pernicious in that.
Here is an excerpt:
The resignation letter sat on his secretary's desk for weeks.
"I was torn about pulling the trigger," renowned Chicago trial lawyer Bob Clifford said.
Clifford joined Butler National in 1984. He recently had formed Clifford Law Offices and viewed the club as Chicago's premier golf facility and "a terrific venue" for entertaining clients.
His two daughters did not protest, nor did his wife. She belongs to the Women's Athletic Club, a 115-year-old Michigan Avenue institution "by ladies for ladies," according to its website.
Clifford spent part of the 1990s on Butler National's Board of Governors and, at times, sought to spark a debate regarding the club's no-women-allowed stance. He never got the chance.
"When members of the board would speak their mind in a way that was not accepted by the people who wanted to keep Butler as it always has been … fine, you can disagree," Clifford said. "But you don't have to be disagreeable. And they were."
Clifford obtained a $75 million settlement for victims of a 2002 scaffolding collapse at the John Hancock Center and has appeared on "Oprah" and "Good Morning America."
A debater by nature, he disapproved of the club's handling of last fall's survey vote, which was conducted by a third party and done via email.
"How about we have an honest and transparent discussion first?" he said.
Internally divided on what to do, he considered the friendships he formed over nearly three decades, saying: "I like Butler National and think all good things about it. I did not want to quit."
But in December, he did just that.
"How does this policy stand at a club that was designed to host events?" he asked. "Somehow Butler got stuck in the 1980s. It's regrettable."
Clifford remains a member at Bob O'Link, perhaps the manliest place on the North Shore. It's a men's club where members such as Mike Ditka revel in the freedom to take meals while wearing a towel. To add a woman would be akin to The Chicago Chop House creating a vegan menu.
"I'm not hung up in the moral side of this," he said. "Butler, in my mind, was built to be a place where the business community could come and mingle for casual or serious discussion. To do that, it has to bring women with it.
"Women will become increasingly dominant in the leadership of our business community. There will come a time when a female CEO will say to her male CFO: 'You cannot belong to this club.' "
'Let them play'
Course owner and developer Mike Keiser was speaking with Mike Davis several years ago, and the USGA executive told Keiser that the group was hard-pressed to find a U.S. Open site in the Chicago area.
"I said, 'If Butler had women, how would that be?' " Keiser recalled. "He said: 'It would be about perfect.' "
Keiser already has done remarkable things for the game.
As laid out in a recent Golf World magazine profile, he brought links golf to America and Canada with Bandon Dunes in Oregon and Cabot Links in Nova Scotia. His wide fairways with ocean views arouse the senses of players, who have discovered the joys of walking with a caddie.
In the piece, two-time Masters champion and course designer Ben Crenshaw called him "a visionary."
From his apartment overlooking the Diversey Harbor Lagoon, Keiser articulated his vision for championship golf in Chicago.
"Butler has the proximity, the parking and the tent opportunities," he said. "It can handle a big crowd. It is this great, iconic, difficult monster, built primarily for tour pros. Let them play."
Keiser speaks as an insider in more ways than one.
He joined Butler in the mid-'80s because he loved golf and could afford it.
"It was purely a selfish choice," he said, "and my wife, Lindy, gave me some heat, but in a nice way."
When he created the private, nine-hole Dunes Club in New Buffalo, Mich., in 1988, he insisted on a non-exclusionary membership policy.
"I wasn't against men's clubs, but they struck me as dinosaurs," he said. "Why would a new club exclude half the people? And what about little girls, like my little girls? I want to take them. I want them to play golf."
Keiser left Butler in the early '90s and joined Shoreacres, in Lake Bluff. He also is a member at Chicago Golf Club and Old Elm, a men's club in Highland Park with, he said, a "fuddy duddy" membership.
Old Elm could add half the LPGA Tour and not get a major. Butler National, at 7,523 yards and rated the nation's 11th-toughest course by Golf Digest, is a different story.
"Let's think of (Butler National creator) Paul Butler," Keiser said. "Let's listen to Tom Fazio. Let's think of the good of golf and, frankly, what's good for Chicago."
In the 1987 book titled "Butler National Golf Club — The First Twenty-Five Years," author Cal Brown writes that Butler "resisted" an all-male membership "partly because of his daughter, Jorie, who was supervising the family interests in Oak Brook, partly out of his considerable admiration for the fairer sex and partly because he thought it more practical to build a family club."
But friends convinced him that with so many "family" clubs already in the western suburbs, an all-male membership would attract more applicants. Plus, as the book states, men "would be less likely to complain about a rugged, demanding golf course."
Jorie Butler Kent, the vice chairman at luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent, said in a telephone interview: "When Dad developed the concept of Butler National, he wanted to have a championship course. He took the lead from the very famous and prestigious Augusta National. I know in my heart that in this day and age, (an all-male membership) is not something my father would embrace."