US Masters: giving hope to hackers everywhere

You go to top-class sport to watch greatness but the US Masters has a habit of reducing the best to rubble from time to time.

Tiger Woods, Tommy Fleetwood and Marc Leishman play the 12th green during the 2018 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club

You go to top-class sport to watch greatness, of course, but the Masters has a habit of reducing the best to rubble from time to time, which is agonising, cruel and fascinating all at the same time.

I watched Phil Mickelson take a fresh air shot this week among the pines (Americans call it a ‘whiff’). Sergio Garcia did a Tom Weiskopf (who once took 13 on the par-three 12th, with five shots into Rae’s Creek), dunking five balls into the water on the par-5 15th, for an octuple bogey (I had to look that one up).

What goes through a great player’s mind as all his hopes disintegrate in an instant, and why does he have a seeming death wish to repeat the same shot over and over again? Recalling Seve Ballesteros’s famous analysis of a four-putt (“I miss, I miss, I miss, I make”), Dan Jenkins, the veteran golf writer, tweeted of Garcia’s meltdown: “Take us through that hole, Sergio. I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I make.” Augusta can make a mockery even of the best, and gives hope to hackers everywhere.

The one thing that televised cricket has never found a way of doing is showing the viewer the pace of the game. Everything looks slower on television. Equally, having only watched the Masters on TV before, I was amazed how undulating the course is, when you can actually walk its stretches. The 10th, for example, is like a downhill ski slope; the 18th far more uphill that you would imagine. TV has a flattening effect.

It is much the same on the greens, which, allied to their glassy surfaces, makes putting a treacherous business. The speed of the greens is measured by a stimpmeter usually, but in keeping with Augusta’s desire to retain some of its mystery and mystique, they do not allow measuring of its greens. On the second day of this year’s tournament, as the sun shone and the wind picked up, they were at their quickest for the week — rapid in other words. They looked frightening to me.

At many sporting events, spectators are either an afterthought or taken for granted. At the Masters, they matter. Prices of food and drinks are kept proportionately low and efficiency allows for it to be served quickly so that spectators can get back to the course and watch the golf. Scoreboards at every hole keep the flow of information moving. The undulating nature of the course makes for natural vantage points.

Rules that you may think are designed to irritate allow for better viewing, too. Taking a phone on to the course is penalised with eviction and is non-negotiable — I saw a couple of distraught spectators being turfed out — causing a last-minute, panicky check of pockets before going out on to the course. But it means that everyone watches the golf, rather than being busy recording events for posterity, and it means that spectators are exactly that, unencumbered and not distracted by technology. It costs Augusta a few billion hits on social media, no doubt, but so what.

“If you really want to know how well run a business is, check out the bathrooms.” So said the great American swindler, Allen Stanford. The toilets at the Masters are, you will be pleased to know, pristine. Better than that, they are filled with history of the event, with newspaper cuttings lining the walls. Look up from taking a leak in the downstairs loo of the clubhouse, and you can read a report of Gene Sarazen’s famous albatross on the 15th in 1935, after his “shot heard around the world”. The Masters pays homage to its champions and to its history. Although the course has changed over the years, modern players can measure themselves against those of the past, and spectators can cross-reference against events of the past. Every important drive, chip and putt carries context — a critical part of its appeal.

I’d never really given much thought to the role of the caddie before, assuming golf to be, like cricket, an individual game. Rickie Fowler constantly referred to his efforts in the plural during press conferences (“We played well this week”), which gave me cause to think more deeply. Confidant, mate, adviser, psychologist, mathematician, partner, teacher, shoulder to cry on? Presumably, a caddie’s role is a combination of all these, and more.

It was 1983 when Augusta allowed the players to bring their own caddies for the first time. On Sunday, television picked up a conversation between Michael Greller, a former teacher, and Jordan Spieth in the final round, before Spieth’s shot from the pines to the long par-5 13th. Back and forth they go, deciding between a four-iron or a hybrid club for more distance, until Spieth finally settles on the hybrid on Greller’s advice and, just as well, as he only just cleared the creek. A partnership, then, and a vital one.

The Grace Kelly of golf courses it has been called, pretty in all weather and from all angles. This is true. No matter how much you hear, you will be taken aback by the beauty of the place. I’d always wanted to sit behind the 12th tee, looking down the beastly little hole called Golden Bell, to the creek, footbridges, flowers and pines behind — surely one of the most memorable views in golf.

Jenkins again: “Something mystical happens to every writer who greets the Masters for the first time, some sort of emotional experience that results in a search party having to be sent out to recover his typewriter from a clump of azaleas.” Whatever you do, said the sports editor of The Times, don’t mention the azaleas. After four days of reporting I almost managed it.

The Times