American Notes BIRMINGHAM

A wag once defined golf as a sport in which grown men brandishing sticks chase a little white ball around a big green field. He might have added that the field usually belongs to a lily-white country club. It is common knowledge that Birmingham's Shoal Creek Country Club has no black members, though the fact is not usually publicized. But last month, miffed when Birmingham politicians discussing the approaching Professional Golfers' Association championship tournament criticized his club's exclusionary practices, Hall Thompson, founder of Shoal Creek, offered a blunt defense: "We pick and choose who we want."

Thompson's declaration stirred up a fuss around the P.G.A. event scheduled Aug. 9-12. Civil rights leaders mounted plans to picket the tourney. IBM, Toyota, Anheuser-Busch and Honda yanked ads from telecasts. The P.G.A., which has routinely played at all-white clubs since it was founded in 1916, vowed to stop it. At week's end, Mayor Richard Arrington, who is black, got a "statement of clarification" in which Shoal Creek's board of governors asserted that membership in the club "is open to any natural person over the age of 21." What the word natural means is that corporations need not apply.