Augusta Has All the Charms of Any Southern Belle

The first time I went to a Masters, I was disappointed.

I was expecting something else. I was expecting Augusta National to be a golf course set amid the most breathtaking scenery in the South, nestled in meadows of green and gold, with chipmunks chattering and bluebirds on every branch. It would be far removed from the hazards of common, everyday life, free from auto exhaust and urban blight.

The same thing happened on my first trip to Disneyland. I had an image in my mind, of a combination Shangri-La and utopia over the rainbow, that one could

reach only by driving miles into a forest, then pressing a secret button on the trunk of a tree. I was unprepared for street litter, service stations and motels. Reality came hard.

Following my directions to the place where the Masters golf tournament was played, I kept checking the slip of paper in my hand, certain that I had somehow missed the turnoff to wonderland. Somewhere between the Chinese restaurant and the International House of Pancakes, I could see the traffic forming, and the entrance signs posted. It looked like any other street in Any Other Town, USA.

I was crushed.

A cop pointed me through a gate, which led to a gravel parking lot. I looked around for evidence that I had mistakenly wandered into a Georgia swap meet, or a fairgrounds where Jimmy Swaggart would be leading us in prayer. No, I apparently had the right place. A sentinel let me pass, checking my paperwork with the scrutiny of a U.S. Treasury agent using a magnifying glass on a counterfeit C-note. Then into this alleged El Dorado I went.

My first stop was a press headquarters, which turned out to be a green Quonset hut. It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Jiffy Lube. Its tables were splintered, its seating inadequate. From the rear, you couldn’t see the leaderboard. I felt somehow displaced. In my mind, I imagined the Masters to be a place with chairs as comfy as the leather of a Cadillac, for those who wanted to sip a mint julep before rejoining the Ralph Lauren brigade out on the course.

Ah, reality.

Except something happened after that. I put down my belongings. I pinned on my badge. And out onto Augusta National I stepped, to get a load of this golf course that had looked so idyllic on my TV. Ha, I scoffed. Camera angles, melodramatic narration and gauze on the lens, that’s why Augusta must always look so good. What a sham. What a scam.

Until I found myself on the course, and paradise was found. The fairways were lush and lustrous. The galleries crisscrossed and circled, like Lionel locomotives on an electric-train track. Sure enough, there were azaleas in bloom. Georgia pines lined the right side of hole No. 2, a beauty that stretched 555 yards, past Cornus florida rubra--pink dogwoods--and a babbling stream.

Ah, nirvana.

I am not a golf nut by nature, and do not normally fawn over grassy links or contoured landscapes the way I would, say, Scottish moors or a mountainside in the Himalayas. When I hear golfers carrying on about country clubs as though they had discovered a Holy Land with holes, I must confess, my eyeballs roll. Some men and women I know have three topics of conversation: golf, work and golf.

Jack Benny once joked, “Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the golf clubs and the fresh air.”

That’s how I felt about others’ obsession with the game.

Nevertheless, the more I explored Augusta, the less I minded the blathering of those suffering from Golf Talk Syndrome, let alone the audiovisual pollution beyond heaven’s gate. OK, so the street outside the Masters golf course was not a road of yellow brick. Didn’t matter. I felt better now. I was here, inside, not indoors but inside, away from the congestion and the corner Waffle House. I was in Mastersland.

Ever since, it has been one of my favorite stops on life’s tour.

I have been lucky. I was there when Jack Nicklaus rolled in that putt, in those checkered pants, and won the tournament at age 46. I was there when local boy Larry Mize made a chip, the likes of which I had never seen. I was there when Sandy Lyle saved one from a sandy lie. I have specific memories of specific backswings, of a Seve Ballesteros ball skipping into a creek, of a Scott Hoch gimme that became a gotcha.

Some things have changed since I first came to Augusta. That Quonset hut is gone, replaced by an auditorium that rises and fans out for maximum efficiency, like a lecture hall of a college professor. The course itself, however, needs no improvement, because it is perfect as it is.

This is no U.S. Open, with alternative sites and come-one, come-all entry qualifications. The Masters is a tournament that screens its applicants, limiting them to a precious few, and extends invitations to the same 18 holes, April after April. It has a continuity no U.S. Open will ever know.

A sociologist, Robert Lynd, once said, “It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is, when one is playing golf.”

I feel that way at times, generally when I find myself at the Masters, watching it.