AUGUSTA Analysis of club's stance is a Hootie

Polls and public relation specialists say that Augusta National is on the defensive.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Silent for more than two months, Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson has gone on a media blitz to round up support for the club's all-male membership.
He wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal.
He commissioned a poll that shows most people agree with Augusta National's right to associate with whomever it wants.
And he gave interviews to a small group of reporters, Johnson's first public words since he slipped the green jacket on Tiger Woods after winning the Masters last April.
The media campaign has left public relations specialists wondering whether it would sway opinion on the debate over Augusta's membership.
The perception
"When you come out with a media blitz, it's perceived as scrambling. It comes across much more as an act of desperation," said Jonathan Bernstein, whose Los Angeles-based company, Bernstein Communications, specializes in crisis management. "But it's also a case of 'better late than never.' He had a message to get across."
Augusta National, under attack from Martha Burk and the National Council of Women's Organizations since July, hired a media consultant six weeks ago.
Why talk now?
"You have to say, 'Whom can this kind of information affect?' It does not affect those people who already have made up their mind," said Mary Ann Ferguson, a journalism and communications professor at the University of Florida.
In an interview last week, Johnson said there had been speculation about when Augusta National would have a female member, and, "I thought we ought to get the record straight."
He reiterated the club alone would decide when to add a female member, and that there was no chance one would be invited to join before the next Masters in April.
Johnson did not deviate much from his July 9 statement on the history, tradition and constitutional rights of the club to associate with whomever it pleases.
If that was the case, why say anything at all?
Silence best
"Regardless of what you say, if you don't say what the other side wants you to say, you're better off keeping your mouth shut," said Mike Herman, president of Epley & amp; Associates public relations firm in Charlotte, N.C. "I think the silence carried a message.
"It seems to me that the club has itself in a situation where whatever it does, it looks defensive. And I'm not sure either the club membership or the club leadership sees that as a negative."
Johnson made sure reporters saw stacks of letters on his desk that he said supported Augusta National, and a telephone survey of 624 newspaper readers in Pennsylvania -- 90 percent of whom said he was right.