Putts, protests to share stage at Augusta.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

Traditionally, and this is the tradition unlike any other, the Masters is Amen Corner and the back nine on Sunday.

This year, it's about the street corner - several of them, in fact, which will be the scenes of protests at the venerable golf tournament.

Traditionally, the Masters is about the golf and the course - treacherous putts, Rae's Creek and azaleas blooming; dangerous doglegs and spectacular dogwoods.

This year, a forest of picket signs - though safely away from Magnolia Avenue - will sprout near the Cathedral in the Pines.

Tiger Woods is seeking his third straight Masters championship. Martha Burk, the women's rights activist, is pressing her case to force the staid, male-only membership of Augusta National Golf Club to allow a woman to join the club.

There they are, improbably sharing the national spotlight, the Lady and the Tiger.

Amazing, all the commotion. Corporate sponsors, taking cover. CBS, tiptoeing under pressure. Barbarians, gathering somewhere outside the gates of golf's chapel.

All this over whether a silver-haired Republican millionairess with a blue-chip stock portfolio will be allowed to don the green jacket of a club member.

Rosa Parks, this isn't. Figure that the first female member of Augusta National will have essentially the same demographic as the Old Boys - average age 72 - in this club of 300-some very wealthy and well-connected gentlemen.

Sure, an all-male golf club is an anachronism in the 21st century. Augusta National isn't the only one, nor are such clubs illegal.

The thing of it is, when you look up anachronism in the dictionary, you see a drawing of Augusta National, which runs the Masters in the same protective, quirky way that it has for decades.

At the Masters, the spectators actually have manners. At the Masters, a pimiento cheese sandwich costs the same as it did a decade ago - even while the rest of Augusta happily and unabashedly gouges visitors during Masters week with hotel rates that are shameless. At the Masters, the course has changed, in response to the modern game, but the sense of history remains strong.

Augusta National doesn't change easily, but it can. Just over a decade ago, there weren't any black members; now, or so it is reported, there are seven, or three more blacks than there are coaching Division I-A college football teams in this country, if you want to get riled up about a real outrage.

Burk, head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, has won, no matter how long it takes Augusta National to allow a female member. She's got corporate advertisers worried she'll target them.

She's really only made one mistake, which was to suggest that Augusta National is an affront to women in the armed forces fighting in Iraq. How silly. Those women are worried about staying alive, and about their families, and about education for their children and about jobs. They want to live to be 70; they're not worried about being eligible to be members of Augusta National when they're 70.

So that shot was out of bounds, but grant Burk a mulligan; she's engineered a case study in capturing public attention.

But to what end? Will the first wealthy woman wearing the green jacket of an Augusta National member be that symbolic? Will that event chip the glass ceiling? Will the waitress at Denny's see that on TV and shout out "You go, girl"?

Even Burk, involved in abortion rights, family planning and other women's issues, laments she can't get the kind of attention for those issues that she's received for taking on Augusta National.

But she'll be in Augusta next weekend, in a circus-like scene. By the way, she has not succeeded in getting CBS to drop its telecast. Which raises these questions: Can you believe in women's rights and still happily watch the Masters, and dare you hit the mute button on the few occasions CBS cautiously strays from talking golf?

I do, and I will, and in a heartbeat.