In early April, the Augusta National Golf Club is where golf fans dream to be.
By Michael Ransom (www.mransomwriter.com)
Reading time: 11 minutes
The Masters. To anyone who loves golf, upon hearing these two words, their eyes mist over, and they hear angels strumming harps in the background. The Masters Golf Tournament, held each year since 1934 at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, is one of the toughest tickets to score in all of sports. Think World Series, Super Bowl, Final Four, Cooperstown, Kentucky Derby, and Fenway Park all rolled into one. Walking the course is like walking through paradise. (Don Sutton, Baseball Hall of Famer once said, "If you don't get goose bumps when you come into this place, you don't have a pulse.”) Augusta is renowned for its impeccable grounds. Pine straw is imported, bird chirps and tweets are played on inconspicuous speakers, and even the ponds were once dyed blue. The club is famed for its azaleas and dogwoods. Spectators, called “patrons,” are reverential, hushed, and tread lightly on the hallowed ground. If you break into a run, an Augusta marshal will remind you that running is not allowed. Don’t even think of littering. For all other PGA tournaments, marshals hold up QUIET signs when a golfer addresses a ball. No one holds up signs at the Masters. The patrons know they must behave.
PGA golfers think the Masters is special, too. Dave Marr said, “At my first Masters, I got the feeling that if I didn’t play well, I wouldn’t go to heaven.” Bobby Jones, the club cofounder, said, “I shall never forget my first visit to the property which is now Augusta National. The long lane of magnolias through which we approached was beautiful. The old manor house was charming. The rare trees and shrubs of the nursery were enchanting. But when I walked out on the grass terrace under the big trees behind the house and looked down over the property, the experience was unforgettable. It seemed the land had been lying there for years just waiting for someone to lay a golf course upon it.”
All electronic devices, including cameras and cell phones, are forbidden, so patrons are isolated from friends, families, work, and the rest of the world’s busyness and can only focus on the golfing drama that unfolds before them. Though people pay an arm and a leg for tickets, once inside the grounds, the concession prices are extremely reasonable. The classic pimento cheese sandwiches are a $1.50 each, domestic beer is $4 a cup, and imported beer is only a dollar more. Though the lines in the merchandise areas are long, the prices are reasonable there, too.
Growing up, I was so involved with baseball, volleyball, tennis, and racquetball that I did not pay much attention to golf. Any sport, I thought, where you don’t play hard enough to work up a sweat, isn’t really a sport. In the late 1980s, though, I became addicted to the game. I started taking lessons, watching instructional videos, and playing multiple times a week. I envied the natural golfers, those you could tell had learned golf and competed in the sport at an early age. They had fluid swings, flawless short games, and carded their best scores under pressure. As my love for golf grew, I became fascinated with the Masters. Practice round tickets (Monday through Wednesday) were available to the public, but tickets to Thursday through Sunday for the tournament action were impossible to get. I thought I had a better chance of walking on the moon than ever attending a Masters Tournament in person. But one must learn never to think never.
In December 2015, an opportunity arose to obtain two tickets to the Masters. Not only I, but also my wife (Jeanine), son (Ben), daughter-in-law (Lindsey), and granddaughter (Greta, eleven months) would be going. Ben and I pored over the course layout before we went and decided on the best places to view the action. One perk that I found hard to believe is that if you have an official Masters folding chair (which we were able to obtain), you can set it up to reserve your spot. Hundreds if not thousands of spectators arrive well before the gates open and stand in line to rush in and place their chairs in prime spots, either around the eighteenth green or wherever else they might want to be. They can roam about the course knowing they can return at any time to where they’ve left their chairs. Another perk is that more than one person can share the same ticket. This meant that with two tickets, Ben, Lindsey, Jeanine, and I could each spend time at the tournament.
Ben found lodging for us in Aiken, South Carolina, about twenty miles from Augusta. Aiken is a town of about 31,000 in horse country. We flew into Atlanta on Friday, April 8, and drove up past Augusta to Aiken to stay our first night there. The excitement of a Saturday and Sunday at the Masters is like none other. Waking that Saturday morning, I couldn’t believe that we were soon to experience it. Our plan was for Ben and me to attend Saturday while Jeanine and Lindsey, with Greta, shopped and dined in Aiken. I’ll long remember us walking the hallowed Masters grounds our very first time. I’d seen the course and its beauty on TV, but there’s no comparison to being there in person, to be part of the crowd milling around, to hear the roars in the distance when a golfer makes an unbelievable shot, to see the numbers on the old-school leaderboard (think the baseball scoreboard at Fenway Park), and to hear the crowd’s murmurs when the leaderboard changes.
On Saturday, Ben and I watched Bubba Watson tee off on the first hole with his pink-shafted driver, and then we worked our way to the tee box (at the top of a hill) for No. 6 (a par 3) to see four twosomes play through. One of the golfers was Larry Mize, a senior golfer who had won the Masters in 1987. (Past winners are invited to play each year.) It was breezy, and I remember the golfers having a tough time reading the wind, which was much stronger above the trees than down below. It was a neat hole at which to begin. We were behind the golfers when they teed off, so we could see the ball soar high in the air before plopping down on the green far below. Then we spent most of the afternoon on the fifteenth fairway (a par 5), where we could watch the golfers’ approach shots to the green. On Sunday, Jeanine and Lindsey spent the morning at the tournament, and then Ben and I got to spend Sunday afternoon at the Masters. We watched Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau (then an amateur) tee off on the first hole. Then we followed Sergio Garcia and Bubba Watson on Nos. 10, 11, and 12 before moving to what became our favorite location, beside and behind No. 7 (a par 4) green. The first twosome at No. 7 was Matthew Fitzpatrick and Jamie Donaldson, and thirteen more would follow, the last pair being Jordan Spieth and Smylie Kaufman. After watching them, we headed to the eighteenth green to watch golfers finish their rounds. We had to stand, but we were hole high, up a bit on the side of a hill, and just a few yards off the green.
Jordan Spieth was favored to win. He led from the first round and built a five-shot lead going to the back nine on Sunday, but he lost six shots to par over the next three holes (not too long after we had seen him at No. 7), culminating in a quadruple-bogey on the twelfth hole, where he hit two balls into Rae’s Creek. .Ben and I were standing near the eighteenth green beneath a TV broadcast booth and could hear announcers tell of Spieth’s meltdown at the twelfth. The crowd gasped when the scoreboard showed Spieth’s score on the hole. Danny Willett shot a bogey-free 67 (and an overall 5 under par) to win his first major championship, three strokes ahead of runners-up Lee Westwood and Spieth, who suffered one of the biggest collapses in Masters history.
The 2019 Masters
We thought that it would be hard to top our 2016 Masters experience, but 2019 was even better. Another opportunity arose for us to obtain two tickets for the full week, which included practice rounds on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (with the Par-3 Contest Wednesday morning) followed by the actual tournament Thursday through Sunday. An even bigger dream would come true. Our plan was for Ben and me to fly south on Sunday evening (staying again in Aiken) and catch the action Monday through Thursday. Lindsey, Jeanine, Greta (almost four), and Ellie (eighteen months) would fly there Thursday night so we could take turns going to the tournament on Friday through Sunday.
With Ben at the 2019 Masters Golf Tournament
Ben and I rolled into Aiken at 3:00 am Monday. After a few hours’ sleep, we arose so we could get to the course early. Our friend Guy Paradise had obtained tickets for Monday and Tuesday; we met him and enjoyed the day together. Storms rolled in, and all patrons were cleared from the course at 3:00 pm. The rain continued into Tuesday, so the course didn’t open until 12:45; the line was long for patrons to re-enter the course, so we didn’t get in until 2:00. That afternoon we watched from various vantage points. We sat in the stands by the No. 16 (par 3) tee box and laughed and cheered with the crowds who were watching golfers try to skip their tee shots across the full length of the pond onto the green (a Masters practice-round tradition). Guy and I had agreed to meet under the oak tree by the clubhouse at 3:00. I got a late start from No. 16 and knew I had to hurry. At one point, I broke into an easy jog, and I had only run a few steps before a marshal spotted me and told me to walk. I arrived late and missed Guy. He had waited a few minutes and then taken off. Without cell phones and with so many people, it’s nearly impossible to coordinate meetings.
The Par 3 Contest on Wednesday was the highlight of the pre-tournament action. We arrived early so that we could scope out good seats and chose to sit greenside on No. 4. Golfers hit their tee shots right at us. The golf balls, tiny white dots in the blue sky, would plop down only a few yards away. There were three holes-in-one during the Par 3 Contest. Mark O’Meara holed out on No. 5, right after we saw him putt out on No. 4. There was a loud roar from the green, so we knew someone had put one in the cup. Shane Lowry and Matt Wallace also hit holes-in-one.
Ben and Lindsey attended the tournament on Saturday. Jeanine and I were there Sunday for one of the most memorable Masters final rounds of all time. Because of the threat of thunderstorms, it began at 7:30 am, earlier than usual, with threesomes rather than twosomes. We arrived midmorning, put our chairs on No. 15 fairway, and then headed to behind the green on the par 4 No. 7 to watch the action. The first group we saw included Justin Thomas, Phil Mickelson, and Jon Rahm, and then we watched five more. The last threesome included Francisco Molinari (who was then leading), Tony Finau, and Tiger Woods. Molinari bogeyed the hole and Tiger hit his approach shot to within six inches of the cup and tapped it in for a birdie, so he gained two strokes on Molinari. From No. 7, we hustled over to our chairs on No. 15 (par 5). This would be the hole where Tiger emerged as the leader. Molinari had hit his ball into the water on No. 12. On No. 15, he laid up short of the green. His approach shot clipped a tree and landed in the water in front of the green. He would bogey the hole. Tiger drove the green in two and two-putted for a birdie to gain two strokes. As Tiger, Molinari, and Finau walked to the par 3, No. 16 tee box, I headed toward the No. 16 green. I couldn’t get close, but I did hear (feel) the roar as Tiger’s ball curled close to the hole.
Jeanine and I began walking from No. 15 back to the No. 18 green. The area was so packed with patrons that we decided to sit and sip an Azalea cocktail on the patio outside the clubhouse. The umbrellaed tables seated six. We spotted one that had a couple seated at it, and they welcomed us to join them. We struck up a conversation and learned that they were the parents of Jon Rahm’s fiancé. She and Jon had met during their college years at Arizona State, and they were to be married in November. Rahm had been paired with Tiger on Thursday and Friday of the tournament, and he finished in a tie for ninth. The crowd let out a tremendous roar when Tiger rolled in his winning two-foot putt. He raised his arms in joy and, on his way to the clubhouse through the throng of people, stopped to hug his mom, girlfriend, and children, Charlie and Sam. Woods had won his fifth Masters title, and fifteenth major, by one stroke ahead of three runners-up. It left him one shy of Jack Nicklaus’s record six Masters wins, and three short of Nicklaus’s record of eighteen major wins. At age forty-three, Woods became the second oldest Masters winner, again only bettered by Nicklaus, who won at age forty-six. Because of the high profile of Woods and his storied fall from the top of the game due to personal issues and injuries, the victory generated a large amount of publicity around the world and is regarded as one of the best comebacks in all of sports. And just think, we were there to be part of it!