Weekend Guide: The Masters
around amen corner ⛳️
Growing up my summers were spent playing twilight golf on a shitty public course about a mile from my house. At around five, two or three of my friends would meet, shouldering our little bags and clubs and walk along a busy Southfield Road. Backs sweating. We would turn into the gravel lined drive that led to the course, drop our bags and saunter into the ‘clubhouse’. Grab a gatorade from the display and hand over our wrinkled $5 bills.
After we all got up on the first tee box and slapped our little drives out into the field of play we picked up our bags and lumbered off into another world. We stayed lost until dusk when our balls were barely visible. No cell phones. No idea what the fuck was happening anywhere else in the world. We were on another planet.
Whatever I felt out there, I can’t feel again. I’m not nostalgic for it - truth be told, I don’t even think about those nights, or those friends anymore. Fast forward twenty five years and my relationship with golf is fractured. I get out only a few times a year, and i’m still roughly the same player I was when I was a kid. Pretty good. Sometimes. Not great. Most of the time.
Golf is the hardest game on earth. No questions asked. Not only does it require grace, strength and precision - but it rewards mental toughness — the ability to exert control over the abyss that is the mind.
The beauty of playing the game is unquestioned. But watching golf is almost impossible. At least it was for me up until a few years ago. It used to be that MLBs opening day marked the transition away from the grip of winter into the cool drink of summer. No longer. I get excited about golf once a year — Masters week.
In preparation for this years Masters. I figured it would make sense to read something Masters related. So, I picked up The 1997 Masters: My Story by Tiger Woods. I had to go right to the god.
Tiger is a complicated dude. No doubt about that. He is also the greatest golfer of all time. By a mile. This book is a blow-by-blow walk through of his 1997 Masters win. One of the coolest sporting feats in recent memory. At 20 years old, in his first professional tournament he won The Masters — by 12 strokes. Wild. No one will ever do that again.
Tiger had me feeling like I was rounding Amen Corner on moving day. I was eating it up like a pimento cheese. Admittedly it was pretty dry, but so is golf. I remember watching SportsCenter highlights of his win — that historic fist pump — but being reading Tigers account and watching the final round broadcast on YouTube this week has been a fun exercise.
Before April ‘97 golf was a niche sport. After Tigers 🐅 historic win, it wasn’t. It was worldwide. And in the 25 years that followed, golf has gotten stronger, longer, faster, and more commercially viable. It may even be attractive enough to entice a golf novice (you) to tune in to the broadcast.
David Coggins describes the uniqueness of The Masters broadcast as The Wall of Green. No ads. No nonsense. It’s magical enough to get my golf nostalgia receptors tingling a bit. If you have even a passing interest in golf, tune in on Thursday. Even if you are not a golf fan, The Masters broadcast is an ambient audio/visual experience.
First hole or last hole, in golf, every shot is the same. Wether you’re hitting from the rough or putting for birdie - all things are equal. There has to be some sort of metaphor about life buried in there somewhere.
I will be posted up on the couch this weekend rooting for Tiger to do the unthinkable. Join me!
Had my first birdie here. That really short Par 3 with tee box near the club house and the green out near Southfield Road. I want to say it was the tenth hole because it always felt like it came right after the turn... but I don't think it was and I don't think it actually did.