By MIKE LOPRESTI
Gannett News Service

For sale: One green jacket. Slightly used. A rich fellow named Thomas Wyman has renounced his Augusta National Golf Club membership, which is like a frequent flyer turning down lifetime aisle seats on the Concorde.

In a show of support for the women - the angry ones, anyway - Wyman is taking his wedge and going home, or at least to another clubhouse. He is now the Cesar Chavez in the protest movement to let Ms. X join the Club.

Tee time at 8 a.m.? Hell no, he won't go.

It is this week's episode in As the Masters Turns. The newest sign of unrest among the Augusta ranks over keeping the ladies outside, and the national brouhaha that is banging at the gates.

Meanwhile, Augusta Chairman Hootie Johnson hunkers down in his Alamo, while the assault troops line up outside against him, from the Rev. Jesse Jackson to The New York Times.

It is time for him to do what a leader must sometimes do. Make a deal. Find a way out. Realize that a man can be pragmatic and still hold to his principles.

This should be Hootie's bottom line: There is ongoing damage being done. To his club. To his tournament. To his game. The Masters' mission, it says somewhere, is to promote and preserve golf. And this isn't doing it.

The injury may only, in part, be a matter of perception. But perception and image mean a lot, particularly at Augusta, where pimento cheese sandwich wrappers are seldom seen flying free on the grounds.

It values its neatness, its beauty, its uncluttered magic. This mess is like a fungus racing across his greens.

And it can all be stopped.

Johnson should not surrender to the stated demands. He should establish his own deadline for admitting a woman. Make it real, make it reasonable, and give his word.

Let's say, the Masters of 2004. Eighteen months. Time to think, ponder, plan, and let the talk shows and headlines cool.

There appears to be growing support among his membership that the time has come for a woman. What seems to get stuck in Augusta's throat is having a timetable dictated to it by outsiders. That is a cause a private club finds worth fighting for, and with some justification.

Privacy ought to mean something. It just can't be dismissed for the convenience of activist argument. Augusta has the law on its side. If it didn't, Martha Burk would be carpet bombing the place with attorneys.

But Johnson gains nothing by having the flexibility of a tire iron. It is not his concern for the rights of a private club I find objectionable. It is his total inability, so far, to come up with a creative way to calm the waters.

He is the leader of an institution that treasures its dignity. When confronted with controversy or trouble, he ought to be making smart moves. And he hasn't made one yet.

Eighteen months. That seems a rational solution. It would be moving judiciously, carefully, and at Augusta's chosen speed. It would reflect an understanding of the world, and its own membership.

And it would end the shouting. Or should. At that point, anyone still talking about confrontation should just go home and stick a club cover in it.

Meanwhile, the question of the day is if there will be any more defections, or Wyman is a lone voice in the wilderness.

The members do not normally leave this club until they are carried out. But it is a different day. Augusta should already know that.

Yo, Hootie. No one should set a deadline for your golf club but you. So set one.