PHOENIX – When the men of the Phoenix Country Club saw their feeding ways in peril, they did not tarry. Some sent nasty e-mail messages, hectored players on the fairway and, for good measure, urinated on a fellow club member's pecan tree.
The targets of their ire were the women, and some men, who have dared to speak up against the club's policy of forbidding women in the men's grill room, a center of power dining in Phoenix.
Barbara Van Sittert, one of those women, said her husband, Logan, 73, has been heckled while playing golf and once found his locker defaced.
“They hooted and hollered at him and called his wife a whore,” said Barbara Van Sittert, 72. “It was not warm and fuzzy.”
Charges of sexism against private golf clubs are not uncommon. The Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, where the Masters is held each year, does not permit women to be members.
But here in Arizona, where the governor, secretary of state, chief justice and Senate minority leader are women, it has rankled more than a few women that nonmember men have more rights than paying female members at the Phoenix Country Club, a century-old fixture in the city's social and business life, where it costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to belong.
Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, is not a member of the club, but Dennis Burke, her chief of staff, is. Burke has publicly opposed the separated dining rooms and in an interview called them “indefensible.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., does not belong to the club but has spoken there. The McCain presidential campaign declined to comment on the separate dining rooms.
Women at the club are not permitted to have lunch in the men's grill room with their husbands after a round of golf. They have been barred from trophy ceremonies after tournaments, even ones they have sponsored, and may not participate in one of the most sacred rituals of the men's grill room – sealing a deal with a client over a beer.
As teenage boys saunter into the sumptuously appointed men's grill room, their mothers are relegated to the ladies' grill, down the hall with a hot plate, some card tables and no bar.
“The ladies' grill is a very small room where a bunch of little old ladies gather to play cards,” said Wanda Diethelm, a health care executive.
“And if you make any noise, they shush you.”
Grumbling about the disparity has gone on for years.
But the casus belli was when the Van Sitterts, club members for 30 years, decided two years ago that they wanted to partake in some eggs together in the morning. They appealed to the club's board to change its dining policies so they could eat together in the men's grill room, but were rebuffed.
The couple filed a complaint with the civil rights division of the Arizona Attorney General's Office, arguing that though the club is private and not inherently subject to the state's anti-discrimination laws, it is the equivalent of a public accommodation because it receives much of its revenue from nonmembers, including speeches, tournaments, Rotary Club meetings and the like.
This month, the Attorney General's Office agreed with the couple, issuing an advisory legal opinion that the club needed to comply with the state's anti-discrimination laws.
The office's investigation, according to a copy of its findings, noted the inadequacy of the women's facility while listing the lopsided benefits of the men's: three high-definition televisions, a buffet and a bar, and gorgeous views of the golf course. (The office would not comment; parties in a civil rights determination have 30 days to work out their differences privately.)
Attorneys for the country club did not return calls.
A reporter stopped by the club, which is under renovation and partially closed, and found the general manager, Pasquale LaRocca.
LaRocca said that the attorney general's findings were “not binding” and that he hoped “it would not come” to a lawsuit.
The renovated club will have the same formal dining room now used by men and women, and separate male and female grill rooms but with “equivalent accommodations,” he said.
