Making a Left Turn

Onto a canvas of old fools he was slapped, in brush strokes of lime and blond and bold.

Into a clubhouse of ancient ideas he swept, a jock and a kid and a hoot.

Forget Ricky Barnes’ exhaled drives and hold-your-breath putts.

The best thing about him is his timing.

With the promise of protesters rumbling in the distance, a club desperately in need of a distraction discovered one Friday when its annual “sewing circle” was interrupted by a guy waving a needle and stealing the yarn.

Barnes is 22, an amateur, and is in fourth place after 1 1/2 rounds of a Masters tournament that treats his type like so many Martha Burks.

“Cool,” he said.

No amateur has won this event in 66 editions, yet in the first round Barnes pulled a Tiger Woods on partner Tiger Woods in clubbing him by seven strokes.

“A mellow guy,” Barnes said.

The kid cool? The king mellow?

Watching Barnes stalk calmly through 28 noisy holes of Woods-stock makes one want to believe his caddie and brother, Andy.

He told reporters that Barnes was just dumb enough to win it.

To which Barnes, no dummy, agreed.

“He’s probably right,” said Barnes, who later added, “It’s like they say; show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”

And now he’s quoting Lombardi and Rockne?

The Masters has a new face, and it has six stitches in its right eyebrow.

“Intramural basketball,” Barnes explained.

The Masters has a new color, and it looks like one of those dang jackets left too long in the sun.

Not only did casual Barnes wear the exact opposite of cool Woods -- ugly lime shirt, wrinkled black undershirt -- but he plans to look even stranger come Sunday.

There’s this Hawaiian shirt he wore last summer while winning the U.S. Amateur and, well ...

“He packed it, I saw him pack it,” friend Allison Choate said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Barnes acknowledged. “If I’m still around Sunday, I may have something for you.”

The Masters also has a new hall monitor. Her name is Cathy Barnes, and one of her favorite moments Friday was when her son three-putted the 16th hole.

“He looked like he wanted to break his putter, but he didn’t,” she said proudly. “He has a lot of fire in there. We still have to tame it.”

She has pulled him off a course before in his hometown of Stockton for throwing clubs. She has scolded him when he takes the intensity of University of Arizona basketball buddies Rick Anderson and Luke Walton onto the course.

“He’s nervous? So what?” she said. “He better get used to it.”

So he did Friday, quicker than anyone would imagine.

When he stepped on the first tee with Woods, he was best known for the amateur title and for being the son of former UCLA lineman and New England Patriot punter Bruce Baker.

In his father’s lexicon, his first shot was shanked.

“[Tiger] came up to me and said, ‘Relax, things are going to be OK,’ ” he said.

Is it any wonder that 28 holes and a three-shot deficit later, Woods wasn’t so chatty?

“He wasn’t going out of his way to be nice to me or anything, but he was fine,” Barnes said.

After breezing through the first round with 69, Barnes looked over at Choate while standing at the putting green.

He rolled his eyes. She rolled her eyes.

“It’s all a bit overwhelming for him,” she said. “But it’s like, really fun.”

With a crowd gathering around him like folks rushing to sit in speedway turns -- in the last seven years, only five amateurs have even made the cut here -- Barnes finally skidded on the 14th hole, with a shot in the trees and a shot in the soggy fringe and a double bogey.

He banged a club against his weathered Arizona bag. His family had seen this before.

“That’s why it’s so good that his brother is his caddie,” his mother said of Andy, who is four years older. “His brother calms him down.”

Sure enough, his drive on No. 15 was his best of a day, a shot that outdistanced even Woods.

And, indeed, he said his brother told him to chill.

“A momentum booster,” Barnes said. “I hit a great shot in there and things were back on track to where they were in the morning.”

He shot par for his final five holes before darkness fell. He wanted to keep playing.

The same could not be said of many others on a long, muddy, muddling day.

“I was really enjoying myself out there ... with the guys,” he said.

Now Woods and Darren Clarke and Mike Weir and Phil Mickelson are the guys?

Big talk for a senior who is missing school.

“Lots of school, too much school,” said Cathy, shaking her head. “I’m like, ‘Ricky, are you even registered?’ ”

Big talk for a guy who didn’t even start playing golf seriously until he was a teenager.

“He’s just an athlete who decided golf would be his thing,” said his father Bruce.

“We think it’s better that way.”

Maybe it is. Maybe the type of person who can eventually tackle Woods will be the type of person who thinks like Woods, who treats golf like football, a jock with ragged blond hair and a smirk.

When asked about Woods’ challengers, Barnes was quick to answer.

“The door is definitely open for someone to step in,” he said, pausing. “But it’s a long road to get there.”

As beginnings go, even here, especially here, a leaping click of the heels works just fine.

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