Keith Duggan Sideline Cut: A few months back, there was an excited buzz around the sports office caused by the rumour of a group called something like the NWA warming up for a confrontation with Hootie and the Blowfish about golfing women, with a pitch battle on the cards for Augusta.

As ever, the finer details of the issue escaped this space but I do remember wondering why super-tough rappers like Niggaz With Attitude would be bothered campaigning for those leisure pursuits of womankind not involving hot tubs.

Now that the full story has emerged courtesy of the golf pages, this column would just like to clarify that as far as the whole matter of the Masters and Martha Burk and women playing golf goes, we are all for it. Not for Martha, necessarily. Nor indeed for Hootie, but rather for the principle of a good, old-fashioned row.

It has been reported that the initial tide of support for Burk - who looks like she could crack a golf ball just by glaring at it, incidentally - has ebbed dramatically and that she has now been labelled a bra-burner among other things. Well, burn the brassieres, we say, and don't stop there. Burn the phoney hut-thing with the log fire where they sit around jawing at the close of each day's play. See if you can set a spark up under Bernhard Langer so we don't have to schedule six hours to see him play a round. Burn the green jacket. Trample the azaleas. Go swimming in those ponds that look as if they have been transported from the time of Cleopatra. Scream, if only for an instant, just to rid the place of that infernal hush. Curse loudly. Cause mayhem.

Martha's gripe and that of the NCWO - who, disappointingly, are in no way connected to NWA - is that the US Masters is being played on a course run by sexists who reckon Rhett Butler is as modern as man gets. The picture she paints of Augusta is of an elite, not so say snobbish, citadel run by dinosaurs steeped in obsolete tradition who like to sit around in laughable sweaters adorned with knitted emblems featuring Latin and Big Berthas crossed like swords. They smoke cigars and tirelessly impress one another and under-tip their caddies. They gaze admiringly at the oil portraits of themselves hanging in the former presidents' room until some poor sucker drives their sparkling new cars around to the front so that they can drive away feeling absolutely splendid about life.

Sounds like no golf club I've ever heard of.

Hootie, as grand marshall, has the unenviable task of taking a stand against the pesky Martha and her horde of Muffins. His plea is simple: there are occasions when gentlemenfolk and ladyfolk need a little time-out from one another. Augusta is just a simple respite for the menfolk, a rustic retreat where a man can take stock and cleanse his soul and select any one of a number of vintage wines.

This is provided, of course, that those menfolk are Caucasian, absurdly wealthy and politically connected and have bloodlines dating back to Robert E Lee. Ladies are, after all, reasoned Hootie, empowered to enter Augusta, to sip sherry there, to dine there, even to hack up the fabled course. It has yet to be pointed out that they permit Mrs Doubtfire to play the Masters every single year.

All in all, the stand-off was full of juicy potential. Throw in the Ku Klux Klan and that great old orator of bluff, Jessie Jackson, and you have a genuine potboiler. Which is why the last 48 hours have been so horribly disappointing. Blame the rain.

We needed the moist Southern heat and the mosquitoes to set tempers going. So far, this row has a lot to live up to. It was argued only last week that the Augusta thing was the most significant sporting stance since Ali disobeyed the draft order.

The truth could not be more opposite. This is about as trivial as rows get. The notion that Hootie and his ilk allowing women full membership at Augusta would further the cause of women in society by even the tiniest iota is certainly beyond my comprehension.

Precisely who would join, other than the spouses and friends of the gilded members? It's not as if the women who will work around the clock throughout the tournament in the town's many fast-food joints for basic dollars will be offered the chance to rid themselves of the smell of grease with a nice, relaxing nine holes around the scented fairways.

The fear is that there could be a winner here without a war. Martha Burk's campaigning record is, apparently, substantial and impeccable. Well, she isn't exactly going to stir the soul of Emily Pankhurst with her stance on Augusta thus far.

At some level, she has a definite point that the all-male policy that Hootie and the boys so passionately defend is completely absurd. But so is the way she has dug her heels in. And anyhow, is absurdity really such a sin? It would have been wiser to make the point and move on, regardless of how pugnacious and smug she found Hootie's attitude.

And she is on a no-winner as far as image goes. When you are up against an opponent who actually prefers the name of Hootie, you know you are up against someone who does not care a whit for the views of the wider world. (Martha - and if this isn't fate - was actually given the name Hootie as a nickname but managed to lose it).

Martha is in this for better or worse now. Staging a stiff, civil protest just won't make the cut. Martha and company need to storm the Bastille. Get in and cause anarchy. Make a stir. Shout 'boo' just as Arnie Palmer is winding up for his first drive.

Nah, there is no way back for Martha's suffragettes unless one of them breaks the barriers and leaps beneath the feet of Colin Montgomerie as he gallops along the 18th fairway.

A row so slow-burning and ridiculous and gallant deserves a climax full of pathos. It demands it. Forget the Tiger here. This Masters will be unsatisfactory unless we end up with a scene where Hootie presents none other than M Burk with the green jacket on Sunday evening.

I feel sure I am not alone in wishing that these two wonderful fruits should not only meet and debate publicly but ultimately fall in love. My hunch is that Hootie possesses a cavalier charm and dances like a prince. And Martha is certainly a regal looking dame if a touch on the glacial side. Southern fire and ice. An ending fit for the syrupy music they play at the Masters.

And of course if the big issue of whether an infinitely wealthy members' club ought to permit women's names on its books should rear its head, both can end it with the same and really the only sensible reply.

Frankly, my dear . . . . .