Traditionally, Masters Creates Mixed Emotions

And so, for the 66th time, the sports world gathers today to ponder a question more enduring than an oak, more colorful than an azalea, more compelling than a long amen.

What’s with the green jackets, anyway?

Dashing? Or dog ugly?

There are people in this world--89 this week, in particular--who spend their lives striving to win such a jacket.

There are others, however, who wouldn’t dare drape one across the back of anything other than a table or a thoroughbred.

Welcome to the Masters, a golf tournament that, like sweet tea and sour mash, depends completely on your point of view.

It has been relentlessly billed by its television partner as “A tradition unlike any other.”

While absolutely true, that does not mean it is necessarily good.

Throughout the history of organized athletics, there have been other traditions unlike any other.

The Olympics were once contested entirely in the nude. Pasadena once celebrated New Year’s Day with a chariot race.

I love the Masters, with its grace and good manners and gumption to resist change.

But there are times I feel awfully guilty about it.

I love it that the world’s greatest golf tournament is run by a small club that controls a special course that is open only several months each year.

But this club has no women members and reportedly only four black members and answers to no one.

When asked to explain himself on another topic Wednesday, chairman Hootie Johnson gave an answer that pretty much covered them all.

“I don’t have to give you a reason,” Johnson said. “Mr. Roberts wouldn’t give you a reason.”

He was speaking of Clifford Roberts, a Wall Street sharpie who was one of the Augusta National Golf Club’s co-founders with legendary golfer Bobby Jones.

They envisioned this place as a perfect golfing retreat, and, indeed, it is.

Perfectly beautiful.

Perfectly eerie.

I love it that it is the only remaining professional sports event of any magnitude that allows no advertising in its arena, accounting for a golf course that is as dignified as it is quiet.

Yet officials have scolded or blackballed announcers who have criticized the grounds, and until this year they have rarely allowed television to show any part of the front nine.

Oops. They don’t call it a “front nine.” They call it a “first nine.”

They also don’t call the area outside the fairway a “rough.” They call it a “second cut.”

And so will you if you want to talk about it on television.

“I think that Mr. Roberts and Bobby Jones set a pace for excellence and for courtesy and doing the right thing,” Johnson said. “We just try to continue that.”

As witnessed in the concession offerings--egg salad sandwiches, pink lemonade, headache powder--the right thing is different here than in other places.

Sometimes, certainly, it feels right. Other times, though, it plays as awkwardly as a grainy black-and-white movie with jumbled sound.

The Masters is the only major tournament that has continually invited its former winners to play each year.

It is a lovely practice that came to a sudden halt this winter when officials decided that Doug Ford, Billy Casper and Gay Brewer--the bottom three finishers in last year’s tournament and all at least 70--were just too old.

How did the three men find out?

They were mailed letters.

Brewer was so “devastated,” according to Casper, that he boycotted this year’s Champions Dinner.

When asked whether he should have handled it differently, Johnson said, “I don’t look back.”

Thus proving that the chairman is as paradoxical as his tournament, a respected banker with a sterling record on diversity who puts on a green jacket and suddenly sounds like an arrogant small-town sheriff.

Everywhere you look here, it seems, it is a tradition that comes with baggage.

I love it that the Masters tickets are incredibly cheap by modern standards--$125 for a four-day pass in a world of $400 Super Bowl tickets.

But the tickets haven’t been available for 40 years, passed down from old families, old money, old connections.

While today’s average golf crowd is increasingly diverse, the most compelling sight here in recent years is that of Tiger Woods walking down a fairway surrounded by cheering throngs that are completely white.

Once inside, the prices get even better, with one able to purchase two sandwiches, a soda and chips for $5.

Even the souvenirs, which cannot be purchased anywhere else, or on any other weekend, are the cheapest in sports.

“We think a piece of clothing or souvenir here is kind of special to the people that have been here,” Johnson said.

Although located on what appears to be the corner of Waffle House Drive and Bojangles Court in a commercial strip of a cluttered little town, the course itself is a classic souvenir.

The tree-lined entrance area feels like a giant back porch, with green wooden booths and ceiling fans and even an old-fashioned water fountain.

The grounds are so quiet, the most dominating sound for the next four days will be that of the birds.

The air smells like someone ran down the middle of the fairway spraying pine-scented air freshener.

When the player hits a ball into trouble, that often means he is hitting into something that looks like the showroom of your neighborhood florist.

The grounds are impeccably maintained by kids wearing yellow jumpsuits with caps that read, “Litter.”

Even the bathrooms are clean, and permanent, meaning 7,270 yards of course and not one Porta Potti.

The Masters also attempts to be pure in the game itself, and officials have added 285 yards to this year’s course in hopes of making it more difficult.

Charles Barkley’s silly racist charges aside--hey, this gives Tiger Woods a bigger advantage--most have agreed that the changes will be good.

But ... and yes, with the Masters, there is always a but ...

There are no periscopes allowed. So unless you’re in one of the front rows, or camp out on one of the bleachers, you cannot see.

There are, for the first time, no cell phones or beepers allowed.

And the one sin that will get your ticket pulled faster than a Tiger fist pump?

No running.

In other words, don’t try to hurry over to watch a new leader, just enjoy the view.

A wonderful assignment, as long as one doesn’t look too close.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

*--* Returningto the Scene Although controversy has sprung up this year over the decision to not invite former champions Doug Ford (1957), Gay Brewer (1967) and Billy Casper (1970) to this year’s tournament, there will be 21 former winners on hand. The returning champions, with the years in which they won: Sam Snead* 1949, ‘52, ’54 Arnold Palmer 1958, ‘60, ‘62, ’64 Charles Coody 1971 Tommy Aaron 1973 Gary Player 1974, ’78 Raymond Floyd 1976 Tom Watson 1977, ’81 Fuzzy Zoeller 1979 Seve Ballesteros 1980, ’83 Craig Stadler 1982 Ben Crenshaw 1984, ’95 Bernhard Langer 1985, ’93 Larry Mize 1987 Sandy Lyle 1988 Nick Faldo 1989, ‘90, ’96 Ian Woosnam 1991 Fred Couples 1992 Jose Maria Olazabal 1994, ’99 Tiger Woods 1997, 2001 Mark O’Meara 1998 Vijay Singh 2000 * honorary starter *--*