FORE-WARNED

In many ways, the Masters is the golf tournament time forgot, held at a shrine where tradition is religion. Rules of behavior are strict, the penalty severe. Fans who misbehave can be excommunicated. And once they set foot on Augusta National grounds, they know they want to remain in the congregation.

As golf broadens its appeal, as galleries at some PGA Tour stops appear to have made the trip direct from Jerry Springer’s set, this tournament maintains. Spectators are expected to act with respect toward the players and the game. And they do.

There are a number of forces at work. Act up, and you risk losing your badge, one of the most difficult tickets in sports. There is a lottery for the single-day passes for practice rounds, and some wait several years before they get a chance to see players hit shots that will never count in the tournament. Augusta officials stopped adding people to the generations-long waiting list for tournament play in 1978.

“Augusta probably has the best-behaved fans in golf, in part because of what they do with the badges,” says Corey Pavin, who has made 15 Masters appearances. “If you misbehave, they’ll write down your badge number and not renew it. That’s incentive.”

The course is as much of an attraction as the players; there might be 30,000 or so people walking the holes they see on

TV every April before a player even tees off in the Monday practice rounds. The course is still packed Wednesday afternoon, after play has stopped.

“By and large, the pass holder here isn’t someone going to a golf tournament for the first time,” says CBS announcer Jim Nantz, who has covered golf for 15 years. “There’ll be a guy who’s 40 and has his teenage son with him, and he might have been a teenager with his father out here before that.

“The fans are almost trained to react. You can define a birdie roar or an eagle roar without even having to look at the scoreboards.

“Everything about Augusta National is just pure golf; it’s why the players love it so much. Everything is classy, right down to the behavioral patterns of the gallery.”

There are different crowds through the week. The lottery for practice rounds covers tickets for one day only, so there’s a huge turnover Monday through Wednesday. For the tournament, many of the same faces come year after year.

“When you go to Augusta, there are no surprises,” says Ken Venturi, who finished second as an amateur in 1956 and has covered the tournament since 1972 with CBS. “You don’t see people running under the ropes; you don’t see people really running at all. It’s the only major that goes back to the same place every year, and you get some of the same fans sitting in the same places every year. I see some of the same people I’ve been seeing for 20 years or more.”

Dotie Menger, 69, of Milledgeville, Ga., has made the trip to the Masters since 1947, missing only two tournaments because of knee surgery. She wears a hat adorned with every badge she has had since 1966 and wouldn’t give it up for all the blooming azaleas in Georgia.

“I was offered $2,000 for my hat,” she says. “I told the gentleman he was crazy. I wouldn’t sell it for nothing.”

“You know, every year, the galleries here are great. They really respect the players. In all that time, I’ve never seen anybody act out of line.”

Most say even those lucky enough to get passes for a practice round seem to understand the Masters protocol--or at least learn it quickly.

One fan who was beginning to resemble a microbrewery during a practice round a year ago was a little too loud. After being told by a marshal that his ticket number was going to be written down if he didn’t pipe down, the fan became as calm as Rae’s Creek at dawn.

Marshals call it “power of the badge.”

That’s what Nick Price thinks is the key ingredient to keeping golf tournaments from going the way of most spectator sports.

“You’ve got to enforce restrictions, like they do at the Masters,” says Price, who is playing his 15th Masters. “On the back of every ticket, list the code of conduct, and if you violate it, you lose the ticket.”

The words of Augusta founder Bobby Jones, that sportsmanship and proper behavior are as big a part of golf as the play itself, are on each badge. The credo is taken seriously, and there are Pinkertons, in and out of uniform, all over the course to enforce it.

Price likes the deterrent.

“It’s almost the same thing as not having a highway policed,” he says. “People are going to speed. If there’s no discipline, we get away with whatever we can get away with. That’s just human nature. We’ve got to be controlled.”

At a place such as Augusta National, that sounds like the makings of a Sunday sermon.