A Tradition Unlike Any Other

Posted: April 10th, 2009 | Filed under: Media, Other Sports | 28 Comments »

Warning: Long, winding bit about missing my first Masters since 1992.

While the overall point of this piece is to relate some of the feelings about missing my first Masters golf tournament in almost 20 years it is probably best to begin by pointing out that Chad Campbell is not going to win. I learned the few things I know about golf in Augusta, and it took me a good, long while to learn that lesson. Campbell, you will note, leads the Masters after one round. He shot a brilliant 65 on Thursday. In my younger days, when I was a 25-year-old columnist for the hometown Augusta Chronicle, that would have impressed me. I would have exhausted many, many words to tell the story of Chad, the gritty golf years in Texas, the glitzy time playing golf at Nevada Las Vegas, the year he won 13 tournaments on something reasonably called the Hooters’ Tour, the breakthrough win at the Tour Championship and so on. I would write about him being ready to break through.

After a while, though, I came to realize that veteran golf writers — the men who had been coming to Augusta for years and years — did not spend much of their time writing opuses about Chad Campbell just because he happened to shoot one good round of golf.

No, I came to notice that the the veterans held to a fairly strict writing schedule:

Thursday: Write Nicklaus.
Friday: Write one of the old stars who missed the cut (preferably Arnie, though Gary Player could work).
Saturday: Write Greg Norman or Seve Ballesteros or Tom Watson or, anyway, someone interesting. Like Nicklaus.
Sunday: Write about the winner (or Nicklaus).

I didn’t understand that. I did not understand a lot of things veteran golf writers did. I did not understand why they sat in the press room and watched television on the back nine on Sunday … I would come to learn that lesson too. But first, I had to learn that golf is not like anything else I had ever covered. The thing that strikes me now is that the first golf tournament I ever really covered was the 1992 Masters. I wasn’t just out of my depth — I would have been out of my depth covering the North Carolina amateur — I was lost. I did not play golf. I did not watch golf — I had no golfing memory other than vague cache of Watson chipping in and Nicklaus charging. I did own a set of golf clubs, if you can count the beginner set I had picked up for 25 bucks* somewhere — those would be the clubs I would used the last time I played a (semi) full round of golf. Which was 1992. At Augusta National.

*Beginner set, I would find, meaning that it only had the odd-numbered clubs — 3-wood, 3-iron, 5-iron, 7-iron, 9-iron — and a driver and putter. Those are still the only golf clubs I own.

So here I was, the hometown columnist for the biggest golf tournament in the world, and I knew nothing. In many ways, that was my one advantage: Knowing nothing. I talked at length with legendary golf writer Herbert Warren Wind about why he named the 11th, 12th and 13th holes “Amen Corner” — he got it from an old gospel song. I will always remember that he pronounced it “Ah-men corner.” I had a long lunch with Ben Crenshaw and listened to him explain (the way a parent might explain to a 6-year-old) what made Augusta National different from every other golf course in the world — it was impossible not to feel the beauty of it all seeing it through his eyes. I listened to a South African golfer named Fulton Allem give me the best quote I ever heard about the Masters.

“When you cross the magnolias,” he said, “your hair stands up. It happens to everyone. And the person who combs his hair best, wins the Masters.”

I listened to Nicklaus. I listened to Palmer. I listened to Player. I listened when Johnny Miller called the Masters “The U.S. Spring Putting Championships.” I listened when Tom Watson explained how the rain affected the greens, an in-depth explanation that, in my memory, included the pattern or earth worms. I listened as the delightful Roberto DeVicenzo recounted how he lost the 1968 Masters on a scoring screwup (“What a stupid I am,” he said after he signed a incorrect scorecard that cost him a stroke and a place in the playoff). I stood under the giant tree by the clubhouse — a tree so old that it is held together by wires; I sometimes call it ‘The Orthodontist Tree’ — and I asked golfers and writers exceedingly and embarrassingly basic questions, and they were mostly kind. One year, I asked one of the veteran writers why so few people seemed to write about the Chad Campbells of the world who lead after the first round of the Masters.

He then became the first person (but hardly the last) to relate to me the famed Peter Jacobsen quote: “The slums of Chicago are filled with first-round Masters leaders.”

And then he explained it in a way I could understand. He said, “Imagine that you covered a football game like you cover the Masters. So they play the first quarter, and everyone goes home for the day. How much time would you spend writing about the hero of the first quarter?”

No, Chad Campbell is not going to win the Masters.

* * *

My first Masters was in 1992, and as you might imagine, I felt a great deal of pressure. I would have felt that pressure even if I actually knew something about golf. That fact I did not know anything made me nervous to the brink of breakdown. Funny thing is, looking back, not knowing anything was probably my greatest strength. If I had fully understood what was happening — that every single one of the world’s great golfers and every single one of the world’s great golf writers and thousands of the world’s biggest golf fans were waking up to my absurd columns and stories — I would have had that breakdown.

The thing I remember most about that first one — and if you are a golf fan, you will appreciate this — I remember going into the press room to get something* and seeing all these golf writers from all over the world just sitting there and watching the final nine holes on television.

*Sun screen, I think — there were many lessons to be learned. I got burned to a crisp that first Masters.

And I thought: “What are these people doing? Oh man, I will NEVER do that! NEVER! I will go out there and find the story.”

And so I went back out to the course, and I raced from hole to hole, and I didn’t see a single thing. Sometimes I saw a golfer hit a ball, though I could never actually follow it. Sometimes, I saw a ball fly out of the sky and bounce nearby, and I had no idea who hit it. I did sweat a lot. When the tournament ended, I came into the press room again, and my editor said: “Oh my gosh, can you believe that Fred Couples’ ball hung up on 12?”

And I said: “Huh?”

So, no, that wasn’t necessarily my best Masters.

It was later that first year — and I have written about this many times before — that I got to actually play Augusta National with my starter set.* Every year, in those days, the Augusta people allowed people in the local media play a round of golf at Augusta National. This led to my famed 72 … on the front nine. They never let me back to play the course after that. They were right.

*As I believe I have mentioned … I only played the first 16 holes because my friend Greg was getting married that weekend on some South Carolina island, and we had to rush off to catch the last ferry. And yes, when I tell that part of the story, I have seen grown men cry.

The thing I remember most about the 1993 Masters is that in a desperate effort to write something different, I wrote one day about short golfers. I did not win the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

Jose Maria Olazabal won the 1994 Masters in one of the more boring Masters ever. Actually, looking back, all three of the Masters when I was columnist in Augusta were rather boring. It’s easy to forget what golf was like before Tiger Woods came along.

In 1995, Ben Crenshaw won an emotional Masters. But what I remember is that David Frost led the Masters after the first round. This made me very happy because perhaps my only contribution to golf coverage was my rather famous “Masters Prediction System.” In the system, I plugged in all sorts of variables — average height of Masters winners, average weight, average age, average length of name and so on — and came up with the player who was most likely to win the Masters. In 1995, David Frost emerged as the most likely winner, and though he did not win, he did lead after one round (thus reserving his place in the slums of Chicago) and he finished tied for fifth, which in my mind made my prediction pretty darned good. It would have been even better even better except that my system had this quirk in that it ALWAYS predicted that David Frost would win the Masters, including 1993 when he missed the cut and 1994 when he finished 35th.

Nick Faldo won in 1996, though I suppose more people remember it as the tournament Greg Norman choked away with his horrendous Sunday performance. He went into Sunday with a five-shot lead. I was working for the Cincinnati Post then, and we did not have a Sunday paper … which should have made my Saturday fairly easy. But, of course, I could not go to the Masters and not write a column for Sunday. So, I wrote a column for the Scripps Howard News Service basically saying that tournament was over, that Greg Norman had it all wrapped up, that everyone should just go home. Lesson learned.

The 1997 Masters was one of the most remarkable things I have ever covered. That was my first Masters for the Kansas City Star. And it was the year Tiger Woods emerged on the scene with the most dominating performance in the history of professional golf. For Sunday — with Tiger Woods up nine shots — I ended up writing an offbeat column that people still ask me to send them.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – From up here, you can see heaven. You can see shopping centers beyond   the magnolias.  You can see Paul Stankowski’s shirt, which is louder than a   Metallica concert.  You can see Ike’s tree and Rae’s Creek and Amen Corner and the cars that   rush by on Washington Road and a million people.

The people all scream advice.

“Bite,” they yell.

“Big kick,” they   yell.

“Go left,” they yell.

You wish they would shut up.  You don’t need any advice.

You are Tiger Woods’ golf ball.

You don’t need any help.

You are a handsome golf ball.  Dimples.  Hard body.  You are a lucky golf ball.  You don’t get hit much. You don’t have to take any baths.

You are a good golf ball.  You stay out of trouble.  You don’t hit people.

You saw Colin Montgomerie’s ball hit people on Saturday.

Bad ball.

You are the best ball.  You will win the Masters today.  You will win by many, many shots.  Nobody can stop that.  Your boss, Tiger Woods, is the greatest golfer in the world.  He has played better than anyone ever this past week.  He has hit you nine fewer times than any other golf ball. That’s a lot.

“Too far,” you heard Costantino Rocca’s ball say.  His ball is the closest one.

You spoke to Tom Watson’s ball, and according to her, Watson said: “I   just want to play my best golf and try for second place.”

All other golf balls play for second place.

It will be this way for the next 20 years.

After 1997, I have snippets of memory. I remember when Vijay Singh won in 2000, he told us that his young son had put a note in his golf bag before the final round. What did it say? “Good luck?” “I love you Daddy?” “Can I get a cell phone?”

No, this was Vijay Singh’s son. So the note said: “Trust your swing, Papa.”

I remember 2001 and 2002 when Tiger Woods won and the feeling was that he would win every Masters forever. A long aside on Woods: There’s something about Tiger that makes you forget about the long odds of golf. Think about this for a moment: A major golf tournament features roughly 100 of the best golfers in the world. Everyone of them is capable, with some great putting, of shooting the best round of the day at Augusta. Every one of them — if they can find the sturdiness to repeat their swing under pressure — could shoot four low rounds and win the green jacket.

And golf is not like other sports. It’s not like tennis, where a player can get really hot at Wimbledon but if he is going to win the thing it is inevitable that will have to, at some point, vanquish Federer or Nadal. In golf, as the cliche goes, Tiger Woods can’t play defense. He can’t stop anyone from shooting four great rounds. If Chad Campbell (or David Toms or Ernie Els or Zach Johnson or Mike Weir or anyone else) keeps making puts and keeps shooting in the 60s, he will beat Tiger Woods. And at the British Open if Phil Mickelson (or Vijay Singh or Sergio Garcia or Camilo Villegas) gets really hot and shoots really low scores, he will beat Tiger Woods. And if at the PGA Championship Padraig Harrington (or Lee Westwood or Paul Casey or Geoff Oglivy or Jim Furyk) gets really hot …

And so on. And so on. The odds are daunting. Someone, you figure, SHOULD be hot every week.*

*As I wrote those words from here in the Kauffman Stadium press box, my buddy Vac called out, “Hey, did you see that Chad Campbell is four-under par today? He’s eight shots ahead of Tiger.” So, maybe I’m wrong about him.

Nobody thinks odds when it comes to Tiger. It’s like he is so good, so unbelievably good, that he has taken the odds out of the equation. With Tiger, we no longer think about the vagaries of the game — the wind, the choppiness of the greens, the bad hops, the lip-outs, the lucky bounces. Tiger has won six of the last 14 major championships he has played. He finished second four other times, third once and fourth once. He is expected to win.

And because of this, our expectations for Tiger Woods are other worldly. I believe — and I imagine most people believe — that Tiger Woods inevitably will break Jack Nicklaus’ record for most major championships. There is some debate about what constitutes a “Major,” but going with the most the standard line:

Jack Nicklaus has 18 major championships (6 Masters, 4 U.S. Opens, 3 British Opens, 5 PGA Championships)

Tiger Woods has 14 major championships (4 Masters, 3 U.S. Opens, 3 British Opens, 4 PGA Championships).

So, Tiger is four away from tying Nicklaus, five away from breaking one of the great records in sports, and I have little doubt that he will do it. Woods is just 33 years old, he’s only five away from doing what he has been dreaming since he was a kid with Nicklaus poster on his wall, he seems to have recovered from his surgery, he’s the best player in the world … he might have the record broken by the end of next year.

But re-read that sentence. He’s ONLY 33 years old. He’s ONLY five away. He SEEMS to have recovered from his surgery. And so on. The age? Well, Tom Watson — one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game — did not win a single Major Championship after he turned 34. Arnold Palmer won one. The complete list of golfers the last 50 years who have won five major championships after they turned 33:

1. Jack Nicklaus (seven majors after he turned 33).
2. No, that’s it. Jack Nicklaus.

And that brings up another point: Five major championships is A LOT. Only eight men — including Tiger — have won five majors the last 50 years.:

1. Nicklaus 18
2. Woods, 14
3. Gary Player, 9
4. Tom Watson, 8
5. Arnold Palmer, 7
6. Nick Faldo, 6
(tie) Lee Trevino, 6
8. Seve Ballesteros, 5

In other words, Hall of Famers like Curtis Strange, Ray Floyd, Payne Stewart, Nick Price, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Greg Norman, Larry Nelson, Johnny Miller, Bernhard Langer, Tom Kite, Tony Jacklin and Ben Crenshaw — to name only a few — did not win five majors championships in their ENTIRE CAREERS. And yet, Tiger has been so good that many of us just assume that it’s inevitable to win five major championships from here on in. Piece of cake.

And it really doesn’t have to happen. One thing you may know about Nicklaus is that he finished second in majors a record 19 times. But what’s really interesting is when you break them down. Four times — when they were both in their primes — Lee Trevino beat Nicklaus at major championships. Trevino came back to crush Nicklaus at the ‘68 U.S. Open. He beat Nicklaus in a famous playoff at the 1971 U.S. Open at Merion (that was the one where Trevino pulled a rubber snake out of his bag before the round began). Trevino beat Nicklaus by a shot at the 1972 British Open — that was the year Nicklaus won the first two majors and seemed like he might win the Grand Slam. Trevino chipped in at the 17th hole and won by a shot. And then Trevino beat NIcklaus by a shot at the PGA Championship at Tanglewood Park.

Then, Nicklaus had three major championships late in his career absolutely taken away by an ascendant Watson. Watson beat him down the stretch at the 1977 Masters. He beat him in the greatest man-to-man matchup in golf history at Turnberry in 1977 — the famed “Duel in the Sun”*. And of course, Watson chipped in to beat Nicklaus at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in 1982.

*Nicklaus finished second to Watson … and he finished TEN SHOTS ahead of third-place finisher and Hall of Famer Hubert Green. Hall of Famer Lee Trevino finished fourth, 11 shots behind Nicklaus. Hall of Famer Ben Crenshaw finished fifth, 12 shots behind NIcklaus.

So is the point that — if not for the greatness of Trevino and Watson — Nicklaus actually would have won 25 majors? Well, that could be the point I guess … but I mean it more to say that you don’t know what will happen. A Tom Watson or Lee Trevino could emerge and have Tiger’s number. It’s not impossible: Think about how Nadal emerged for Federer. I don’t know who that golfer would be (Chad Campbell?). Tiger’s greatness is unquestioned. But we could be making a big mistake in thinking that he is all but certain to break Nicklaus’ record. As golf writers like to say … there’s a lot of meat left on that bone.

Back to the Masters: I remember Phil Mickelson’s victories in 2004 and 2006. I’ve always liked Phil. There are some in the media who feel he is a bit of a phony, but I always have found him to be nice and accommodating, and, anyway, I’ve never fully understood the “phony” charge. If someone is ALWAYS phony, then isn’t it real? Or something like that?

I think about David Westin, the Ghost, who started covering the Masters for the Augusta Chronicle long before I arrived on the scene. We call him Ghost because he would be there one minute and the next he would be gone … it is uncanny. Ghost also taught me to write down thoughts and quotes and phrases that I like. And of my favorites is something he said about what makes the Masters different from other golf tournaments: You will never see the winner paid with one of those giant cardboard checks.

I think about the chicken sandwiches … the best bargain in sports. People who have gone to the Masters a lot always talk about the Pimento Cheese sandwiches, they are more famous. I’ve never had one, and won’t ever have one. Not as long as they have those chicken sandwiches. There is a lot to not like about Augusta National — they have a shameful history when it comes to race relations, and they still do no have a woman member and so on. But they do make one helluva chicken sandwich.

i think about the way the ninth green tilts — there’s no way television can capture that slope. I think about how that tee shot at 12 makes even the greatest golfers melt*. I think about the trek to get out to Hole No. 5 … last I had heard, the great golf writer Dan Jenkins has been to like 799 Masters, but he has never seen Hole No. 5.

*I made bogey there, in case you are wondering — my second best hole of the day. I parred 11.

Yeah, I love Augusta. I’m here at Kauffman Stadium, which looks great after the renovations, and I’m about to see the Yankees play the Royals, which is great (even if Sidney Ponson goes for the Royals) and this is where I should be. But, yeah, I do miss the Masters.

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