The battle of the sexes continues in the 21st century, even among very public sports arenas. Two stories this past week may have a thread of commonality or they may be two opposite sides of the same issue.

Both Hootie Johnson, chairman of Augusta National, and Al Unser, Jr., two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, were accused of (1) insensitivity on Johnson’s part, and (2) domestic violence on Unser’s sheet.

Johnson sent a curt, three-sentence letter to Martha Burk, who chairs the National Council of Women’s Organizations, essentially telling her to mind her own business. The NCWO is an umbrella for about 160 groups, totaling about 6 million members.

Last month, Burk sent Johnson a letter expressing the hope that Augusta National would have women members before the next Masters Tournament.

Johnson’s reply, quoted by Associated Press, said the NCWO letter was “offensive and coercive.”

In a longer public statement, Johnson stated that “Our membership decides our membership — not some outside group with its own agenda.”

Burk’s response to Johnson’s response was that it was “insensitive at best and confrontational at worst.”  She said the next step will be to contact the sponsors of the Masters, Coca-Cola, IBM and Citigroup, and ask them to not do business with the golf club.

The club’s first black member entered in 1990 and it has never had a female member in its 70 year history. Johnson denied that it is exclusionary and added “There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours, and not at the point of a bayonet.” The club’s 300 members vote on whom to invite into membership.

One member, Lloyd Ward, is the first black CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee. During the last Masters Tournament, Ward remarked that he would lobby to broaden the membership to include women.

The Masters is separate from the PGA Tour and is operated solely by Augusta National. It gets most of its money from its TV contract with CBS and from sales from its souvenir shop. A tournament week ticket costs $125, about half of what other major tournaments cost spectators.

Burk says that if Augusta National continues to bar women members, the Masters should be moved to a course that doesn’t.

Johnson noted that the two entities, the tournament and the club, are intertwined, but quite different. He said that one is a private club, the other a world-class event.

It would appear that Augusta National, by building its private little tournament into a highly successful event of world attention, has indeed attracted the eye of groups with their own agenda.

On the other hand, Al Unser, Jr. was arrested Tuesday morning in Marion County, IN, charged with domestic battery and domestic violence. Both are misdemeanors and AP reports he posted $30,000 bond to get out of jail. The Marion County prosecutor will decide whether to file formal charges after police finish their investigation and submit their case. A hearing is set for next Friday.

The woman, Jena Soto, was found standing by a guardrail on I465 about 3:30 AM. She told police that she has been Unser’s girlfriend for about four years. She said they had been out and were headed back to the motorhome. She said she was driving because Unser was drunk.

She claimed that he kept shifting gears on the car while she was trying to drive. She admitted she struck him because he would not stop. She said that he then struck her and drove off after she got out of the car.

Unser was arrested at the motorhome where he was living on the infield at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He was supposed to play in a charity golf tournament there Thursday and drive in an IROC race at Chicagoland Speedway Saturday.

See how golf connects all this? Hmmm.