Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a financier named Darla Moore will become the first female members of Augusta National Golf Club in October.
The 80-year-old home of the Masters, under increasing criticism the last decade because of its all-male membership, invited both women to join when club opens for a new season in October.
Both have accepted.
"This is a joyous occasion," Augusta National chairman Billy Payne said this afternoon.
The move likely ends a debate that intensified in 2002 when Martha Burk of the US National Council of Women's Organisations urged the club to include women among its members.
Then club chairman Hootie Johnson stood his ground, even at the cost of losing Masters television sponsors for two years, when he famously said Augusta National might one day have a woman in a green jacket, "but not at the point of a bayonet."
Augusta National, which opened in December 1932 and did not have a black member until 1990, is believed to have about 300 members.
Payne, who took over as chairman in 2006 when Johnson retired, said consideration for new members is deliberate and private, and that Rice and Moore were not treated differently from other new members.
Even so, he took the rare step of announcing two of the latest members to join because of the historical significance.
"These accomplished women share our passion for the game of golf and both are well known and respected by our membership," Payne said in a statement.
"It will be a proud moment when we present Condoleezza and Darla their green jackets when the club opens this fall.
"This is a significant and positive time in our club's history and, on behalf of our membership, I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome them and all of our new members into the Augusta National family."
"These accomplished women share our passion for the game of golf and both are well known and respected by our membership" - Billy Payne
While the club until now had no female members, women were allowed to play the golf course as guests, including on the Sunday before the Masters week began in April.
The issue of female membership never went away, however, and it resurfaced again this year after Virginia Rometty was appointed chief executive of IBM, one of the Masters' corporate sponsors. The previous four CEOs of Big Blue had all been Augusta National members, leading to speculation that the club would break at least one tradition - membership for the top executive of IBM or a men-only club.
Rometty was seen at the Masters on the final day wearing a pink jacket, not a green one. She was not announced as one of the newest members.
Darla Moore, 58, first rose to prominence in the 1980s with Chemical Bank, where she became the highest-paid woman in the US banking industry. She is vice president of Rainwater, Inc and was the first woman to be profiled on the cover of Fortune Magazine.
Condoleezza Rice, 57, was the national security adviser under former US President George W Bush and became secretary of state in his second term.
The first black woman to be a Stanford provost in 1993, she now is a professor of political economy at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
