Sean,
It matters at Augusta because the Masters is essentially a public domain event given the stature in the sporting world that it has acquired over the years. They tried to appear above it all, but the bottom line is these guys know that without the Masters, it's just another nice club below the Mason Dixon line and they caved like a house of cards. And yes, when my daughter is the CEO of a large corporation and she wants to woo a golf mad client, she should have the same opportunity as my son to potentially gain access to such places and not be relegated to the "family" club in town where guys like us may be less excited to accept an invite. Either that or forbid business outings altogether at such exclusionary clubs, as many corporations now do. You can't have your cake and eat it in this instance IMO.
In other words, principle underlying the Constitutional right to peaceable assembly should take a back seat to the personal desire to make a a few extra bucks. Lovely. Little wonder the Constitution is under daily siege.
Needless to say, I wholeheartedly disagree. This is a free country and if people want to invite whoever the heck they want to join their club, (a) it's none of my damn business and (b) protesting their free decision is merely a way to replace their free will with someone else's.
Shivas:
Bill Walton showed up for his senior year of basketball at UCLA with a head of hair that hadn't been cut in months. His coach, John Wooden, had a rule about such things, and told him in no uncertain terms that he couldn't play or practice with the team. Walton -- in full, 1970s-no-one-can-tell-me-what-to-do -- argued with the great coach, saying he was an All-American, the player of the year in college basketball, and anyway, no one could tell him how or whether he should cut his hair. Wooden, of course, agreed with him, saying no one did have that right. But Wooden also reminded his great center that the coach of UCLA did have the right to determine who practiced and played on the team. "We'll miss you," he told Walton. It took him 15 minutes to get his hair cut and return to practice.
While not totally analogous, there is a difference between the Augusta National Golf Club (a clearly private entity), and the Masters tournament (a public thing in many ways, by any common-sense interpretation of the world "public.") And as you astutely told Patrick Mucci, to think the club and tournament are not closely intertwined is to go fishing for the reddest of herrings.
ANGC doesn't have to disclose how it decides its membership, or even who its members are. But it also doesn't have to host one of the world's most notable sporting events, either. That it continues to do so -- and in doing so sell the viewing rights to that tournament to the public airwaves, as well as invite public scrutiny of the tournament (via tickets sold to the public, and press conferences with members of the 1st-Amendment-protected media) -- suggests the club views itself as not strictly private. Nor is it totally public. It is a private club that does a very public thing once a year in April. As such, the wise folks who run ANGC know -- must know -- that their membership practices will continue to come under some level of scrutiny -- fair or unfair -- as long as they continue to host the Masters.
My guess is that the Masters meant more to them than continued scrutiny of their membership. I'm not surprised.