Golf's true garden party

Writing from Augusta, Georgia
Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Bob Jones knew, when he was creating the course of the Augusta National Golf Club in association with Alister MacKenzie, that there was the opportunity to create something beyond the standard American parkland course.

Jones wanted to emulate, without copying, the great courses and holes of Scotland. In MacKenzie, he found a man could could find the best possible routing for a difficult piece of land to work with. The number of really superior sidehill courses can be counted on one hand.

Augusta National is the best of them, and one of the best courses, period. That alone would make The Masters, which begins its 77th edition on Thursday, an important tournament. Jones' legacy, combined with his persona, brought it major attention immediately, and major status soon after. A certain 4-wood by Gene Sarazen didn't hurt either.

But it was the property that was fortuitously available when Jones and New York pal Clifford Roberts were looking for a spot to place Jones' dream layout that brought forth the final ingredient to give the Augusta National Invitation Tournament, to use the original name, the aura that the other three majors, much less any mere tournament, cannot come close to achieving.

Built on an old indigo plantation turned nursery, Augusta National is as much flower garden as golf course. It's stunningly beautiful, the natural beauty enhanced by an unreleased and likely unlimited maintenance budget. Breathtaking is not a word associated with the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship, and it only connects to the British Open when the oldest major is played on the Old Course. But breathtaking almost damns Augusta National with faint praise, so dazzling are the colors -- green is only the start -- and the manicured perfection of it all. Like Disneyland, the Augusta National Golf Club is fantasy come to life.

Throw in the old-fashioned Southern courtliness of gentleman callers and drawing rooms that pervaded when Jones was winning the original Grand Slam, plus the course rules -- no running, no cellular telephones, no mention of money on the television broadcast, no Gary McCord -- that harken back to his day, and the combination creates a gallery that whispers even when play is hundreds of yards away. Well, unless a more than a few beers have been tipped back, and a $3 for a brew, $4 for imported hops, a few get tipped back, in which case "You the man!" is created.

That brings us to today, the happiest day in golf. The final practice round for The Masters coincides with the annual Par 3 contest, which offers Augusta's beauty in miniature, and sights that cannot be seen anywhere else in golf.

Over here, Rory McIlroy playing and great good friend Caroline Wozniacki, only one of the best tennis players in the world, in the role of caddie for the day. Over there, Jack Fleck, who beat Ben Hogan in a playoff to win the 1955 U.S. Open, still chasing the little white pill at age 91. And over there, totaling 13 green jackets between them, the Big Three.

You know them, of course. Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. The Par 3 contest is the only place they tee it up together. At 83, Palmer's backswing isn't the old helicopter finish, but the love of the people for the man and the love of the man for the people is as strong as ever. Player still goes after it, and if you ever need a lesson in grinding, just watch the Golden Bear, 73, lining up a tee shot like it was the final round in 1986, and standing over a putt until he is good and ready, thank you very much.

That formula worked to the tune of 20 major championships, and while Nicklaus wasn't in contention for Wednesday's crystal, he worked like he did when he was winning here, there and everywhere. Good habits never go out of style.

There's also a jinx, which Ted Potter Jr. now knows. No Par 3 winner has won The Masters in the same year. Potter had the misfortune to win a five-way playoff on Wednesday. Tough luck, Ted.

Sarazen once complained to tournament chairman Hord Hardin, the only Midwesterner to run the show, that he was too old to perform the ceremonial tee shot, that he wasn't hitting the ball well. Hordin retorted, "Gene, they don't care how you hit it, they just want to know you're alive."

The same is true of the Par 3. People had tears in their eyes on Wednesday when Palmer, Player and Nicklaus posed for pictures. They laughed when D.A. Points' little daughter Layla, all of 3 years and 2 months, ran after him on one hole. They cheered on the big course when Bubba Watson aced the par 3 16th, and cheered nearly as loudly for anyone who skipped the ball across the pond and into the green after the practice shots, caddies included.

And they visited the spot in the pine straw off the beaten path on the 10th, the hole where Watson hit the shot that couldn't be hit in last year's playoff to grab his title as if they were pilgrims visiting Lourdes.

Oh yes, the big course. It will get bigger on Thursday. Greens will get a little faster, and firmer. And by the turn on Sunday, collars will tighten and throats will become parched.

All of this couldn't have been predicted when Jones and MacKenzie and Roberts began it all in the early 1930s. But good fortune, amazing happenstance, a certain amount of celebrity and attention to detail has combined over 80 years now to create the best golf tournament of them all, on the most beautiful course, with the most unusual prize -- a jacket only a bowl game representative could love in any other case -- at the end of the trail.

And now, there are even female members of the club, ending the one last bit of controversy -- aside from the one-year absence of the famed chichen sandwich -- that had dogged Augusta National's reputation and had tarnished the tournament's reputation.

No longer. The Masters is now without peer and without controversy. Thursday morning, the first tee announcer will say, "Fore please, Sandy Lyle now driving," and the best four days in golf will begin.

-- Tim Cronin

FYI – Posted Thursday, April 11 thanks to Squarespace-iPad interface difficulties.