The Masters: Black Tie Event of Golf

It starts with a nostalgic trip up Magnolia Lane to the bridal-white frame clubhouse of the Augusta National Golf Club. It sizzles a while and then bursts into a splendorous, magnificent spectacle that marks it as the inarguable aristocrat of its sport.

“Masters Week”

Spell it in capital letters and cloak it -- for emphasis -- with quotation marks. It has been called “The Black Tie Event of Golf.” It is more than a mere golf tournament, more than just one of the majors. It is the game’s annual ball with an aura all its own -- regal and yet gracious, paradoxically as homey as grits and pumpkin pie.

It’s a gathering of golf’s great and near-great, their friends and admirers. To many, it is an observance -- virtually a rite, celebrated for its rich traditions, dignity, hospitality, circumspect operation and resistance to crass commercialism.

“The Masters is a monument to everything that’s great in golf,” said Jack Nicklaus, a six-time winner.

Poems have been written about it. Writers have strained to put into words the natural beauty of its stage and the raw drama of the show.

The cranky press corps savors it. Players revere it.

It remained for a cynical British historian, admittedly faithful to the tradition of the sport’s Scottish birth, to put the Masters into proper perspective.

Saying he felt that the effusive praise for the upstart American event was “postively orgiastic” that sent writers and editors into a “fey trance,” Robert Ferrier decided to come to America to see for himself. The year was 1963 while “Arnie’s Army” was in full cry.”

He was converted.

“In spite of its immense muscularity,” Ferrier wrote afterward, “the Masters is remarkably gracious. It has style and elegance. It is without vulgarity. There is no advertising. The clubhouse is pleasant and modest. Nobody tries to sell you anything. It is in the graciousness that the real dignity of Masters lies.”

On the other hand, the sheer experience of it turned an unschooled ex-caddy and a man whose professional career spanned four eras, into a drooling Shakespeare.

“The Masters is the Mecca of golf,” effused octogenarian Gene Sarazen, who has checked into them all. “It’s where East meets West. Everybody’s here. Sponsors come to scout young pro talent. Merchants push their wares. The old oak on the back lawn is the world’s market place.”

It was the beknickered Sarazen who unleashed that 220-yard rocket for a double eagle two on the 448-yard, par five 15th -- golf’s most memorable shot -- which enabled him to tie Craig Wood and go on to win the second Masters title in 1935.

Photos of that historic playoff show only a few people gathered around the 18th green, in marked contrast to the thousands who now wind along the fairways and through the trees like giant slithering snakes.

In those early days, the event was very informal and low-key, more like a family outing -- just as Bob Jones intended it. It was Jones, the great amateur player of the Golden Age, who had conceived the idea and, with New York financier Cliff Roberts, brought it to fruition.

Having retired at age 28 in 1930, after completing golf’s unprecedented Grand Slam (British Open and Amateur, American Open and Amateur championships), Jones desired to stage a spring tournament for his golfing friends. Rather than use an existing course, he and Roberts decided to build one of their own.

It was during a leisurely drive west of Augusta, the hometown of Jones’ wife, that they chanced upon a lush plantation and nursery known as the Fruitlands. Bulbs flashed in both their heads. They obtained the property, sent for their famed Scottish architect Alister MacKenzie and got the project under way in the spring of 1931.

A holding company was formed and the Augusta National Golf Club was established with 100 charter members, largely businessmen. The initiation fee was $350 and the annual dues $60. The first tournament was played in 1934, won by Horton Smith. Jones finished 13th. He played in 11 others before bowing to a spinal ailment that later took his life.

These were depression days. Augusta was a pleasant, sleepy town with a typical main street of small shops and an economy buttressed by a nearby army base. There was an absence of first class hotels and eating places.

Visitors who couldn’t get into the five-story Richmond Hotel downtown -- these included players and the press -- had to settle in the outskirts for the rambling old Bon Air and the adjacent Partridge Inn, which pundits puckishly dubbed the Tennessee Williams Arms.

The Masters galleries at the time were made up largely of fans from other parts of Georgia and neighboring states, who motored in and made it a holiday. They purchased season tickets for $5 and were automatically designated as “patrons” with the opportunity to renew every year.

This put them in a privileged class since daily ticket sales at the gate were stopped in 1966 and no additions to the so-called “patron’s roll” has been made since 1978. There is a waiting list of 5,000. These tickets, still a bargain at $90, can’t be sold or passed off but, as in the case of a Coca Cola franchise, must be inherited -- then only by a spouse.

Thus it has become the hottest ticket in sports.

In the 1960’s the publisher of one of the nation’s most influential newspapers wired his reporter at the scene to get him two guest tickets for a certain day.

“Sorry,” said Chairman Cliff Roberts bluntly. “We made exceptions only for Congressmen and five-star generals.”

In the ensuing four decades, Augusta has grown with the inflationary tide. New industries have taken root here. The one-time small airport has expanded and modernized. You can find luxury hotel accomodations. Motels, restaurants and fast food eateries are all over the place. The Richmond has been converted into an office building, the Bon Air turned into a senior citizens’ rest home and the Partridge Inn -- whatever became of the Partridge Inn?

This week the town will be teeming. Airports in the vicinity will be choked with private jets bringing corporate executives and their friends. Some of them will move into the beautiful colonial mansions in the suburbs for the week. It’s become a custom. Residents move out and rent their luxurious homes, complete with butler and maid, for $3,000 to $10,000.

Meanwhile, the Masters has remained blessedly changeless. There has been a little primping here and there, some forced expansion. The press -- writers such as Grantland Rice, Alan Gould, Henry McLemore and Damon Runyon -- covered the early tournament from the upstairs balcony of the modest clubhouse. Today’s press corps -- electronic and print, numbering around 1,400 -- requires a spacious special room in the quanset hut that forms the working headquarters. New towers have been erected to accomodate photographers and writers covering action on the course.

Paraphrasing a line from the classics: “Upon what meat doth the great Masters feed that it hath grown so great?”

Some golf technocrats have questioned that the Masters should be bracketed with the recognized major championships, which also include the British and U.S. Opens and the American PGA -- elite titles by which greatness is guaged.

They contend that the Masters hasn’t aged enough, that it doesn’t command the strongest field and even that the great courses doesn’t offer the same challenges.

The Masters is the only one of the Big Four not affiliated with a national association and not representing a national title. At 55, it is the stubby-chin upstart of the group. The British Open is the grandpappy, dating back to 1860. The American Open is 94 years old, the PGA 73. Both the Australian and French Opens are longer in the tooth.

Furthermore, the Masters -- by almost general agreement among players and students of the game alike -- lacks the overall stength of the other three because of the limited hand-picked field -- in the neighborhood of 80 -- and the sentimental sprinkling of old champions, foreign guests and amateurs. The PGA is rated toughest, followed by the U.S. Open and the British.

Still, winning the Masters is worth more than anything else in golf. Mark McCormick of the sports management firm, International Management Group, says a Masters victory brings in more in endorsements and other benefits than the other three majors combined and a a major is usually considerd worth about $1 million.

The course itself also creates controversy. For all its beauty, does the Augusta National present as formidable an adversary as the U.S. Open and PGA, with their gun-barrel fairways, knotty rough and dinosaur graves on the greens? By comparison, some say, the Masters is like a leisurely stroll in the country.

Perhaps, but history disputes it. Augusta National has confounded and frustrated the greatest over the years.

In laying out Augusta with architect MacKenzie, Bob Jones held to his theory that a course should not only be challenging but also a pleasure to play. He insisted that the terrain of the beautiful nursery be retained with a minimum of obstacles.

The result was no rough, instead 70 acres of unfettered, irrigated fairway. There were only 28 bunkers (since raised to 43), compared with 200 or more for most big courses. The greens were large but meticulously manicured and inclined to be exceedingly fast, putting a premium on the player’s second shot. Only three holes have water hazzards. No hole is blind.

Jones was adamant that the maze of color be retained, each hole framed and identified by its dominant native flower -- such as azalea, dogwood, redbud and Chinese fir -- and shaded by towering pines.

“You can’t snap at her,” Jones said of the course later. “She will snap back. She has to be gently cajoled.”

So what is the Masters mystique?

It’s the spirit of Bob Jones, one of the most admired personalities in the history of sports. It’s the stage of inifinite beauty and charm which he left. It’s near-perfect organization and operation. It’s an almost changeless gallery, the most knowledgeable and polite in sports.

Cliff Roberts, who died in 1977, said the first priority was the players and second the fans. Both are treated like special guests. The tournament radiated dignity and hospitality.

It has been a showcase of the stars -- Sarazen, Nelson, Demaret, Snead, Hogan, Palmer, Nicklaus and, more recently, the invaders, Player, Ballesteros, Norman.

The first tournament in 1934 was called simply the “Augusta National Invitation,” at the insistance of Jones who thought “Masters,” proposed by Roberts and sportswriter Grantland Rice was “presumptuous.”

The event might have remained a casual affair for years except that big city writers and columnists, out of deference to Jones, dropped in while en route with baseball teams working their way north from spring training.

“Masters” became part of the sports lexicon.

Interest in the tournament further heightened in the mid-1940s when, with World War II winding down, the struggling pro tour produced a band of straight-shooting Texans and a Virginia hillbilly named Sam Snead.

Byron Nelson, exempt from service, was the fairway giant of the period, winning 19 tournaments and 11 in a row in 1945. Having won his first Masters in 1937, Lord Byron captured his second in 1942, beating longtime rival Ben Hogan in a dramatic playoff that captivated the nation.

Another Texan, flamboyant Jimmy Demaret, became the first three-time winner -- 1940, 1947 and 1950. And Snead, after victories in 1949 and 1952, matched Demaret’s triple with a playoff victory over Ben Hogan in 1954. Interest was so intense a hole-by-hole account was carried on the national wires for the first time.

Hogan, recovering miraculously from an automobile accident that nearly took his life, won in 1951 and 1953. The Hogan shadow hung heavily over the golf world until the bull-shouldered son of a Latrobe, Pa., greenskeeper burst on the scene in 1958 and turned tranquility into bedlam.

As Arnold Palmer, with his sledgehammer drives and putts long as a city block, collected Masters crowns in the even years -- 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964 -- his yelling, stampeding “Army” went berserk. Crowds swelled to 50,000 or 60,000.

Counterfeit tickets flooded the gallery, some traceable to a group of Georgia college students. That’s when Chairman Roberts cut off daily ticket sales.

Palmer’s histrionics coincided with television’s discovery that golf was a marketable commodity. A contract was signed with CBS in 1956 and it has never been broken, although the Masters restricts commercial breaks so as not to interfere with the flow of play. Many attribute golf’s boom to the marriage of Palmer and TV at the Masters.

But for every hero there is also a sucessor.