Talk of the Tour: Augusta on My Mind

NEW – Talk of the Tour is Tom Ferrell’s weekly take on the national and international golf scene.

By Tom Ferrell

The Masters has grown into something much larger than itself in the years since Bobby Jones invited a field of top professionals and amateurs to join him in an invitational at the golf course that he personally—with a big assist from Alister MacKenzie—coaxed from the grounds of a former nursery.

Some look to Augusta with a spiritual reverence—the Cathedral in the Pines. But the spot is hardly unique. The sunlight filters through long shadows, and the birds sing of spring throughout Georgia and the South. Others see it as the ultimate celebration of golf’s traditions. There are long shadows, however, to some of those “old ways” that cause more than a few to view the Masters through a darker lens.

Myself, I see it as the game’s finest intersection of great golf design and great golf skills. The reason the tournament “doesn’t begin until the back nine on Sunday” is the brilliant vision Jones and MacKenzie brought to Augusta National. Here, they sought to provide all of the options, temptations and personal tests that bring the very finest golfers to the top of the leader board—or to their knees. The course is a gauntlet not of impossible shotmaking demands but of decisions and gut-checks. Of opportunities to rise. And fall. The Masters delivers those singular thrills and agonies that define the game for those who love it and baffle those who don’t.

Should the blizzard forecasted to strike Colorado this week indeed materialize, I will be happy to let the clubs rest a few more days. It’s springtime, after all, and it’s Masters week. Golf’s grandest stage is set, and a new act in the ongoing drama is ready to play out.

 

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.