Even from 4,000 miles away, the Masters and Augusta National are the herald of spring that golfers live for
As I sit here in the dark, “Blue Monday”—a pseudo-scientific notion that defines the third Sunday in January as the most depressing moment of the British winter—is now a fortnight behind us, but the weather is still foul and the gloom of the golf addict is yet to lift. Outside, cold rain falls on frozen turf, and those heady afternoons on the links, with the warm sun on our backs, seem as if they belong to another, long-lost world. A bleak midwinter indeed.
But at the far end of this dismal tunnel is just the faintest spot of light, and with it, hope. For somewhere way beyond February and March lies April, and therein what I might call “Green Sunday,” when all the eyes of this global obsession we call golf are cast toward Augusta, Ga.
This will be the 40th time I have tuned in to the Masters telecast. Aged 11, I recall pleading with my parents to let me watch the whole thing unfold on that little, hired Toshiba set in the lounge, for I was newly smitten by the game and had read in Golf Illustrated about this gleaming emerald of a golf course, Augusta National.
I did stay up to witness not only the spellbinding venue, but the most wonderful of finishes, Jack’s enormous putter stroking balls across those slick greens as if Fate were the Tournament Director and the other players mere extras in his grand, finale performance.
At the time, it seemed inconceivable that such high drama would ever be repeated, for that last hurrah of the Golden Bear was akin to Shakespearean theater. But as spectacle—and as the point at which the golf season really begins over here—the Masters is yet to disappoint. To view it is, for me, the most wonderful threshold through which to pass each spring.
The time difference makes viewing awkward, of course, but to be a youngster falling under the spell of golf, and the Masters, at that very point in time was incredibly exciting. Jack’s sixth green jacket was followed by one of many cruel twists handed to Greg Norman, this one delivered by Larry Mize in the gloomy silence of the earliest hole we were allowed to see in those days, the 11th.
Back in 1980, Seve had lit the flame for an extraordinary run in which the Europeans—underdogs on the world stage for nearly two decades—started to win this magnificent event. Sandy Lyle’s bunker shot and slippery downhiller had me sprinting upstairs to break this wonderful news to my parents, who’d been asleep for most of the back nine by that point. Then Nick Faldo joined in, and our local hero Ian Woosnam. Bernhard Langer a second time, then Jose Maria Olazabal, etc. They were golden times.
And even when “we” didn’t win, the tournaments would be just extraordinary, year after year, and the American winners equally cherished this side of the pond. How Fred Couples won only once, I will never know, and Ben Crenshaw’s second triumph, in honor of his beloved coach Harvey Penick, must have caused a million tears to roll down cheeks, down the side of each fairway, and everywhere televisions could be found.
Of course, there are certain things that a restricted broadcast can never impart to the distant viewer. The whispering pundits always talk about the severity of the contours, and how the walks up both 9 and 18 are more like hikes than gentle strolls. And how the waves of sound move across the course when a challenger’s dreams trickle into Rae’s Creek with his ball, or when someone clears that babbling brook and makes the eagle putt, the classic back-nine charge unfolding on our screens as the roars reverberate through the pines, unsettling the competition.
Our familiarity with the holes, and especially that treacherous closing stretch, creates such anticipation, and the gladiators often rise to meet this expectation, trading blows in this majestic amphitheater. Gene Sarazen’s legendary spoon may have been the original “shot heard around the world,” but who among us could not name a hundred other classic Masters moments? Mize’s chip-and-run is among them, of course, and that birdie of Jack’s on 17, his huge putter held aloft in jubilation. And may I call upon Sandy’s 7-iron from the sand again? For it made me believe that there was magic lurking in the rolling hills of that impossibly gorgeous old fruit farm.
Then along came Tiger, and another whole magazine couldn’t do justice to the impact of that era. That iconic pitch from the side of the 70th hole of the 2005 Masters seemed supernatural, and the precise positioning of the toppling ball’s logo inadvertently the greatest advertising feat of all time. But it was surely his fifth triumph that proved that sport is a lens through which we can see all of humanity laid bare, now and then. I actually went upstairs to wake my own son up for that one, for it seemed so utterly ridiculous. I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like that again, but I thought that with Jack in ’86. And this is Augusta…
The heroes and villains of this annual golfing circus come and go, but I am slowly beginning to realize that it is the course that beguiles us all, player and spectator alike. So much has changed from that pristine canvas that Bobby Jones and his Good Doctor left behind, much of it in response to technology and Tiger’s generation of flat-bellies. But even in its stretched and twisted state, Augusta National’s fundamental strategy and beauty continue to impress. These seminal holes come one after the other, masterpieces of thoughtful golf, and even the rookie competitors at the invitational know every hump and hollow just as well as this distant fanatic, for MacKenzie’s camouflage still plays havoc with their dreams. It is brilliant architecture, a fitting monument to the British links that Jones so loved.
That swirling wind above 12, the silent walk back to 13. Rae’s Creek gently rippling nearby, a menacing background noise for the adrenaline-fueled contender. From the 15th fairway, the ghosts of a hundred soaked ambitions linger just beneath the surface; from the final tee, a chute so narrow as to mimic the impossibly fierce demands of our own worst golfing nightmares. There are times down that stretch on “Green Sunday” when I can barely watch, so tense is the action. But nor can I look away, for we wait the whole damned winter for this, so I stare nonetheless, and try to remember to breathe.
And then, in between these peaks of high drama, the cameras sweep across that landscape and we marvel at the views and the conditioning. Months of Winter League tussles have been fought over temporary greens, with ice in the bunkers, and though by early April the grass is starting to grow and things are looking up, the vibrant fairways of Augusta must haunt every British greenkeeper. It all looks so perfect—the bright, slick bentgrass greens, the dark, silky ryegrass fairways, cast against the occasional, brilliant white of flashed sand. Where we might lose a ball in a pile of oak leaves, they may have to move the odd pine needle, and then only if a breeze is rustling through the towering pines that line these palatial corridors. It is presentation on another level. Like the golf.
Somewhere, Charles Price spoke about the attention to detail of those charged with staging this most extraordinary of golfing festivals, and of how “nothing is too trivial at the Masters if it will give one more dab of polish, one final bit of elegance, one last touch of class.” We can see it bouncing off the satellite in the happiness of the turf; we can see it in the way the patrons wear that permanent, enchanted half-smile. It is, as Price went on, “the sum of its tiny well-oiled parts…each one contributing, like a Swiss movement, to the marvel of synchronization that is the Masters.”
Maybe that’s why the tournament so often shines as spectacle. The stage has been so well designed, so brilliantly planned, that all that remains for the intoxicated player is to live out their dreams and give it their all. Jones didn’t name it “the Masters,” nor did he like that moniker. But he mastered golf, and Clifford Roberts mastered detail, and together they and those who followed them mastered entertainment. And suspense.
Augusta is about 4,000 miles from here, as the crow flies, though I doubt the crow ever leaves that nest of his, high in the eaves of that old, white, clapboard building at the end of Magnolia Lane. But in another sense, it is worlds away from here. I’ll never be able to tell my dear parents just how grateful I remain that they let me stay up, back when Jack still ruled the world. But I’m telling you instead. This is how we get through winter; this is where golf begins again each spring. Green Sunday is coming. I cannot wait.
