AUGUSTA, Ga. — My friend David Westin — longtime golf writer for The Augusta Chronicle — and I have been working for years on a list of things that you will never see at the Masters. This came out of David's inspired realization years ago that no Masters winner will ever, ever, ever, ever (ever) get paid with a giant, cardboard check.
You can see David's list here (proud to say I have a couple of contributions on there), but there's something unspoken in there. The greatest mystery of the Masters is not how to read the wind in at No. 12 or how to beat the traffic on Washington Road or even when these knuckleheads will just stop pretending it's 1956 and just admit a woman member.*
*On Wednesday, Augusta National Chairman Billy Payne — who for some reason reporters kept calling "Mr. Chairman," as if he's chairing the Senate Committee of Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry — held the annual "We do not discuss membership policies" press conference. This one, though, was particularly enjoyable, as reporters came up with creative new ways to ask why, in 2012, there are not any women members at Augusta. This barrage included asking how Payne would explain this policy to:
A) Little girls around the world.
B) His own granddaughter.
C) A reporter's daughter.
They cut off the conference before reporters could ask how he would tell someone's niece, Zooey Deschanel or the late Betsy Ross, but not before Payne had been made to look a lot like Fred Mertz.
No, the greatest mystery of the Masters is the Masters itself: How did an invitational golf tournament in a small Georgia town become one of the four majors? Why is a tournament that — unlike the U.S. Open or British Open — does not even claim to be a championship of anything considered by so many to be the most prestigious golf tournament in the entire world?
It's a complicated question that goes back, like everything here, to Bobby Jones. He was not only the best golfer in the world in the 1920s, but he was also perhaps the most admired athlete of his time. He was famous for his gentlemanly manner and his sportsmanship — the story of how he called a penalty on himself, costing him the 1925 U.S. Open, was talked about almost as much as his Grand Slam of 1930. So when Bobby Jones decided to build a golf course after he retired from the game, everyone in and around golf was watching closely. He found a beautiful stretch of land in Augusta that he would say was just waiting to be carved into a golf course. He hired the world's best golf architect, Alister McKenzie, to build a course inspired by the hallowed St. Andrews. It was built in 1933.
A year later, Jones invited some of his buddies to play in a tournament in 1934. The first one was called "The Augusta National Invitational." Through the sheer power of Jones' aura and personality, many of the best golfers of the time, professionals and amateurs, came South to play. And, again because of Jones (who was playing competitively for the first time since his retirement), it got a stunning amount of press right away.
"The Emperor Jones Returns," was the headline over the Jack Burnley cartoon to appear in papers everywhere.
"Jones rated a 6-1 shot," was the headline in the Washington Post.
"Galleryites Moan as One Time Emperor Continues Tumble," topped the story in the Hammond (Indiana) Times.
That last headline was inspired by Jones missing a bunch of short putts in the tournament and finished a disappointing 13th. Jones would play in every tournament until 1948, but he never really contended for victory — and it was during this period that the Masters popularity wavered a bit. Still, the power of his personality kept drawing the best golfers in America. And, perhaps more importantly, Jones' personality drew the press.
See: The media, as much as any other factor, turned Augusta from a vanity tournament for the "tradition unlike any other."
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Of course, the media in 1934 meant newspapers, and it especially meant the star sports columnists — Grantland Rice, Paul Gallico and the like. Well, of course, Jones knew them all. He not only knew them all, the columnists were his friends. And from the start he catered to them. The tournament was held in March that first year, then early April, which just so happened to be the perfect time to get the sportswriters on the way North from baseball's spring training. And when the writers got to Augusta, they not only found a beautiful golf course and great golf action (Gene Sarazen hit his famous "Shot Heard Round The World" double eagle in only the second year of the tournament) … they found a place that adored sportswriters and treated them with esteem.
"This masters tournament in Augusta, starting on Thursday, will carry more than one important chapter from the blue book of golf," were the first words Grantland Rice ever wrote about the tournament. Notice the first three words of his story: This masters (lower cased) tournament. Five years later (at Jones prompting) the tournament was called "The Masters."
In 1958, Sports Illustrated's Herbert Warren Wind named the 11th, 12th and 13th holes "Amen Corner" (after the song "Shoutin' in the Amen Corner"). And with that, those three holes went from interesting to legend.
In 1960, the Pittsburgh sportswriter Bob Drum noticed that his close friend Arnold Palmer had won both the Masters and the U.S. Open. He told Palmer something like this on the way to the British Open: "Hey, if you win the British and PGA Championship, that would count as the modern grand slam." Palmer agreed and promptly went into action.
"Now I've got grand slam ideas of my own," Palmer told reporters as he arrived for the British Open. "I'd like to add the British Open and PGA Championship to my Masters and U.S. Open Championships this year."
Well, it turned out, that a lot of other sportswriters had been thinking along those same lines — some of them writing about this modern grand slam even BEFORE Drum and Palmer had the conversation. Still, Palmer's quote gave clout to the idea of the modern grand slam. By the time Palmer had lost the British Open by a stroke, the story line was that Palmer had tried valiantly but failed to win the Grand Slam — now in capital letters.
And without anyone making an official proclamation, the Masters was a major championship.
Yes, sportswriters defined this place, built up its significance and myth. They told the story of Eisenhower's tree (called that, according to stories, because Ike hit it so many times). They wrote glowingly about the azaleas* and the beauty and the speed of the greens and the general wonder of the golf course. Of course, Bobby Jones and Masters members encouraged them at every turn — and this has never stopped. Writers who cover the Masters can enter a lottery for a chance to play the course on the Monday after the tournament. A computer screen with just about every thing a writer could ever need to cover the tournament (including camera at almost ever hole) is place at every seat. Special seating sections, for press only, are scattered throughout the golf course. Food is provided non-stop. It has always been this way in Augusta.
*As one longtime sportswriter once told me: "The Masters: The one time year when every sports writer becomes a horticulturist."
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Then, of course, there was television. A sports television genius named Frank Chirkinian — the first man to put a camera in the blimp and, more to the point here, the first to show golfers as their scores related to par rather than their overall score — loved the Masters more than any other tournament. He loved it so much that, eventually, he moved to Augusta. Before Chirkinian, golf seemed the worst kind of television sport — too spread out, no violence, no direct interaction — but he changed the landscape. He brought out mobile cameras, used multiple announcers, directed them to avoid cliches ("The first person to say 'it's in the hole,' is fired," he would say). He tried to turn golf on television into a narrative, a story.
And it was never moreso than at the 1975 Masters, when Jack Nicklaus, Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller battled for the championship on Sunday. Weiskopf was putting on the 15th green, Nicklaus was standing on the 16th green (waiting for Tom Watson, who had hit two balls into the water). The exchange between announcers Henry Longhurst and Ben Wright is golf folklore — Chirkinian believed it spurred a new birth of golf on television, and lifted the Masters to another place.
Longhurst: "Nicklaus has had a very long wait on the 16th with Watson having his cruel misfortunes. And the atmosphere here is electric and almost totally silent on the respective greens. But we're on the 15th and Weiskopf for the birdie … OH! What a tremendous putt by Tom Weiskopf."
Wright: "And that is going to be evil music ringing in Nicklaus' ears … He's got to putt up the hill, 35- to 40-feet. He's been standing there for a long time while his playing partner played three tee shots, so to speak. Only about 100 yards from where Weiskopf holed that putt, the way his heading is facing at the moment. Now up a hill … OH!"
Longhurst: "I think that's one of the greatest putts I've ever seen in my life. Weiskopf has to take it this time having dished it out. I never saw such a putt in all my life."
This exchange cut to the heart of what the Masters could be — tense, exciting, a duel through the pines.
Going back to Bobby Jones, the Augusta National folks understood in a way that few in sports ever have that sports is about storytelling and words and and connection. For the Masters, television was an even better outlet than the newspapers because the beauty of the course could be transmitted, and because Augusta people could control the message even better than with sportswriters. They limited commercial interruptions — though it cost them millions in cash, it gained them a grateful and loyal audience. For a long time, they refused to allow 18 hole coverage for fear of overexposure — and that cost them millions more. They pushed Chirkinian again and again and again to convey the beauty of the course. And, at the same time, they ruthlessly cut down any announcer who did not show the golf course the deepest respect. Jack Whitaker was booted after he called the gallery a mob (the only acceptable term for a fan in Augusta is "patron') and Gary McCord was banned after he said the greens looked like they were smoothed with bikini wax and that the mounds looked like body bags (there are no acceptable terms for either of those).
All of this — along with a wonderful series of exciting tournaments, wonderful characters and — pushed the Masters to the head of the class.
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Which brings us back to David Westin's list. There are so many things you won't see at Augusta. As he points out: You won't see a car rotating on a stage on the water at No. 16. You won't see a blimp. You won't see caddies in shorts or standard bearers or Bill Murray yucking it up with the fans from a sand trap somewhere.
Augusta National and the Masters' greatest weakness, at least in my opinion, has been it's stubborn refusal to break from past, even when the past is so clearly wrong. The tournament treated black golfers like Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder shamefully, and did not have a black member for far too long. The members' blunt refusal to allow a woman member sparks different emotions in people — many reading this certainly believe that Augusta National is a private club and its membership policy is nobody else's business — but, like the inclusion of African American and Jewish members, it is inevitable that there will be a woman member at some point. The Augusta National folks, millionaires and billionaires all, have to know this. They just don't want anyone to tell them when.
Still, with Augusta, it's a complete package. Their refusal to break from the past is often a grand thing. While the membership policy seems out of another time, so do the prices at the concession stand … and the beauty of the place … and the loving care with which they run the tournament rather than selling out for every dollar the way so many other sporting events do. The Masters is a self-made major sporting event — built out of the dirt, marketed to the hilt, crafted into the most beloved golf tournament in the world. The world changes so fast, but let's be honest: It's good to know that they will never, ever, ever, ever, ever (ever) pay the Masters winner with a giant cardboard check.
