My mate Paul and his partner Niki were waiting by the scoreboard to the right of the 1st fairway at Augusta National. We hadn’t seen each other for a few months. We hugged, then Paul stretched out his right arm, holding it close to my eyeline. “See those,” he said. Every hair on the limb stood on a tiny bump, as erect as a company of North Korean soldiers called to attention.
Goosebumps are caused by cold, fear or excitement. Paul wasn’t cold or fearful. It was first time at the Masters, same for Niki. They are both keen golfers. We had agreed to meet for a coffee but first I wanted to take them for a walk, to show them the best places to watch. “As long as we’re back in time to see the Par-Three,” he said, determined not to miss the fun little nine-hole tournament that takes place on the Wednesday of every Masters week.
For years Paul had dreamt of this moment, the item on his bucket list that sat right at the top. I have been coming since 2000, Vijay Singh’s year, and certainly in the early years it was difficult to rein back the enthusiasm. It still is, though there is now some semblance of balance. To get the hairs on Paul’s arm to relax, I tell him about a conversation over dinner the evening before.
I had been with a golf coach. Better not to mention his name. He told a story about one of his first visits to Augusta many, many years ago. He went down to the range. Two of his boys were in the field. He walked straight to one of them but was intercepted by one of the club members in a green jacket.
“Sir,” the green jacket said, “you are not allowed on the range.”
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“That’s my player there,” he said.
“Sir, we can ask your player to come and get you but you must remain beyond the ropes until he does.”
So the coach was discreetly escorted to the ropes while his player was spoken to. The player then fetched him. For an hour they worked together. Then it was time to move a few bays to where the second player hit balls. Making that short walk, he was again intercepted. “Sir, you can’t do that,” and the process was repeated. He was off the range and outside the ropes until rescued by his player. The coach hated what he saw as crazy bureaucracy.
When the practice ended, the coach shot the breeze with another green jacket wearer who wanted to know what his players were working on. My friend is amiable and offered up the detail, delivering the technical stuff in an-easy-to-understand narrative. The member was enthralled.
“If you’d like to come back at some point to play the course, I would be more than happy for you to be my guest.”
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“You couldn’t f***ing pay me to come back and play at this place,” the coach said, and he meant it.
Paul is unimpressed. Niki too. How could anyone not want to play here? To a degree, experience can temper enthusiasm. Around the time of my first Masters, an argument raged about the “maleness” of Augusta National. At the time only men could be admitted to the club and when challenged by women’s advocate Martha Burk on this issue, the Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson sternly said: “That’s a club matter.”
Before meeting Paul and Niki, I had bumped into the sports columnist and commentator Christine Brennan in the press centre and reminded her of a terrific first sentence to a column she had written about that controversy: “I made a right turn off the main drag in Augusta the other day and ended up in 1975. Or perhaps it was 1940. It was hard to tell.”
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By now, Paul, Niki and I are walking down the right side of the 5th hole. Already, they have fallen in love with this place as patrons. “When I was young we used to go to France and in the forest I would get the smell of pines,” Paul says. “Here it’s a similar smell and it brings me back to then. I just can’t get over the scale of everything here. So big, and so beautiful. Television doesn’t do it justice.”
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We stopped at the concession stand not far from the 8th tee. Three soft drinks, $6 (about £4.75). They marvelled at that and, of course, they noticed the utter absence of any litter on the course, the speed of the queues to the rest rooms, the cleanliness of said rooms, and they remarked on the fact that so many people walk around here with a smile on their face.
I thought better of telling them about the piece I’d read the previous day on Golf Week’s website. A number of pros were canvassed on the thing they didn’t like about Augusta. “You always feel like you’re on the verge of doing something wrong,” Kevin Streelman said. A sentiment echoed by Steve Stricker: “You feel like you’re walking on eggshells. You have to be careful about just about everything you do.”
My favourite was Tony Finau’s take on one of Augusta National’s treasures. “The sandwiches. They are pretty standard. I think people hype it up because we’re eating it at Augusta National but it’s a backyard, my-grandma-made-this-when-I-was-six sandwich. They are very overrated.”
Instead I told them about Billy Foster, the caddie, and what happened in the third round of the 2010 Masters. Foster was caddying for Lee Westwood at the time. Early that morning he had done his tour of the greens, checking pin positions. The hole on the par-four 14th was cut in a little bowl. “If you were having a bet today,” he said to fellow caddie Ken Comboy, “put your money on someone holing their second shot on 14.”
As Westwood walked down the 11th fairway, his lead was five. What size did you say, Lee? For the Green Jacket. Foster then heard the roar. ‘That’s [Phil] Mickelson making eagle on 13,’ he thought. Fifteen minutes later, with Westwood playing the 12th, another, even louder roar. ‘That’s Mickelson after holing his second on 14, another bloody eagle,’ thought a disconsolate Foster. Mickelson went eagle-eagle-birdie on holes 13, 14 and 15, missing a third consecutive eagle by inches.
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In the space of 30 minutes, Westwood went from leading by five, to trailing by one. The next day he finished runner-up to Mickelson.
I want to show Paul the spot from where Bubba Watson played an extraordinary shot to the 10th green in the 2012 play-off, the spot behind the trees on 15 from where Singh played an outrageous shot to the green in 2000. This is the thing about Augusta National, every hole has its story.
Paul tells me about one of his best golfing buddies, Pete, who fell to pancreatic cancer last month. Sixty-four, there were so many things that Pete was going to do in retirement. When the illness worsened, Pete told Paul that no matter what happened, he wasn’t to call off his trip to Augusta. They had played a lot of golf together.
“There was no way I wasn’t going to be at Pete’s funeral,” Paul says. “Pete died last month, his funeral was last week and we gave him a good send-off. His death was a reminder that we only get one chance to do things like this, and if we have the chance, we need to take it.”
Masters
Augusta National
Thursday – Sunday
TV Sky Sports Golf, 2pm
