All in a day’s work
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Receiving the greatest media perk in golf was electrifying, but also a bit terrifying. It was my fifth Masters and the third time I had entered the media draw. A handful of “working media” fourballs are invited to play each year, and Augusta National likes to spread around the opportunity, the joy, the sleepless anxiety. In advance I had even arranged my travel home for the Tuesday after the Masters, just in case my name was plucked (a couple years ago, one writer played his tee shot on 13 before rushing off to catch a flight; it gives the “walk of shame” new meaning). I love golf, though like so many I am not very good, and certainly not at the level to which Augusta is accustomed. There is a song by Chris Isaak called, Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing. It’s about a woman, but whenever I hear the song it’s about my golf ball and a long line of failed, short-term relationships. Many rounds of golf end for me the way Isaak sings it: “I feel like cryin’, I feel like cryin’...”
While working at the 2016 Masters, our managing editor Robin Barwick saw his number pulled out of the media draw to play Augusta National the day after the final round. He told us he had a meeting with a guy about a story…
Monday, April 11, 2016 Having set a new land slow-speed record driving up the shady idyll of Magnolia Lane, I was anxious to head out to the tournament practice ground to get some swings in on a set of brand new clubs lent to me by a local country club. Mint condition Titleist cart bag, pristine Titleist AP2 forged irons, unblemished Titleist 917 woods, gleaming Scotty Cameron putter. Beautiful, but totally new to me and my fragile game. So it was a quick turnaround in the Champions’ Locker Room—yup, we were allowed in there—and so the day unfolded, with one highlight rolling in after another: Magnolia Lane, Champions’ Locker Room, the world’s finest practice ground, the first tee, the first green... You get the sequence, and it ends where it began, back in the Champions’ Locker Room, Magnolia Lane. The most striking feature about the Champions’ Locker Room is its quiet intimacy, which is typical of the central section of Augusta’s clubhouse, the original plantation manor house built in 1854. The building has been painstakingly preserved and extended since it was converted into a clubhouse by club founders Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts in 1931, and the manor house steadfastly retains a beautifully antiquated feel, including its limited proportions. On the range, my caddie, Charles, was standing by my Titleist tour bag in white Augusta overalls, standard issue, polishing the clubs (not that they needed it, but nice touch). I started with the ol’ reliable 7-iron, the safe play. I had asked for regular steel shafts but I now discovered—on the turf upon which the world’s finest had been warming up just 24 hours before—that these glinting shafts were as stiff as
SPRING 2017
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