nearby greatness, but until an old man climbs a ladder, you will have to endure a thrilling wonder. Most important: Everyone around you is head up, shoulders back, face for- ward; everyone around you is available for amiable conversation to pass the time between groups; everyone around you is watching golf without filters or obstructed views; everyone around you is engaged in the world around them, determined to take everything in before they, or it, must go. GARY PLAYER HELD HIS OWN PRESS conference after he hit his ceremonial tee shot last year. Woods had already made his observation that Augusta Na- tional has become golf’s Ship of The- seus, and the subject of change was in the air. Player speaks in prophecies and pronouncements, and not surprisingly, he offered a short, emphatic declaration on the subject: “Change is the price of survival,” he said, and then he banged his invisible gavel. Golf is in the middle of a seismic period. The distance debate has gripped it for years, perhaps forcing golf-ball rollbacks now that the courses themselves, including Augusta National, have nearly exhausted their own elasticity. Last year, the tee box for No 13 was moved so far back, it was hard to see the players make their drives. The year before, No 11 wasn’t just made longer; trees were felled (on purpose, this time), and the pond was expanded, too. Woods was feeling unsettled because he had hit the mental tipping point that comes after a certain accumulation of small changes. Even at Augusta National, increments can multiply into something dramatic, and suddenly you’re walking on the moon. Now, the LIV revolution is also in full throat. Jon Rahm, last year’s Masters champion, won “on behalf of the PGA Tour” when he came from behind to beat defector Brooks Koepka. In 2024, Rahm will defend his title as one of them. On bad days, it can feel as though a good walk spoiled has become a good sport ruined. Or maybe Gary Player is right: Nostalgia is a limiting, even dan- gerous exercise. Player’s allergy to it probably stems in part from his growing up in Apartheid South Africa; for him,
BRUTE FORCE Brooks Koepka finished T-2 in 2023.
you’re feeling a little melancholic about what you thought you’d find at Augusta and the modern realities of the place, maybe make the long, circuitous walk to the tee at No 11. It’s Augusta’s Idaho: not on the way to anywhere, but worth the detour if you’re in the mind for reflection. It’s quiet back there, quieter than just about anywhere else on the course. You’ll be able to secure a spot right against the ropes, and great golfer af- ter great golfer will appear before you as though they are on your time, not theirs, and lace fizzing drives that you can follow into the sky, framed by the trees and the slope. It will feel like they are performing for you and only you. Here, they will say. Watch what I can do. Then, after you have had your fill of watching some of the last pre-rollback golf balls being obliterated, follow one of the groups down to the green, and wade into the great mass of human- ity that has assembled at the apex of Amen Corner. See the reflections of the
the past has been something to escape, not embrace. Sentimentality is equally fraught in the American South, where every pining for “how things used to be” demands more than a little specificity. Wishing Augusta National was the way it was risks side-wishing for the return of unimaginable sin. Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s colour barrier in 1947. Lee Elder couldn’t in- tegrate the Masters until 1975; the club’s all-Black caddie corps worked the tournament exclusively until 1983; Ron Townsend, the club’s first Black member, wasn’t admitted until 1990. Augusta National’s galleries remain overwhelmingly, unnervingly white, but it says something about forgiveness – or selective blindness, at least – that the Masters still occupies the place in American society that it does. If things hadn’t changed, right about now some- one would be burning the clubhouse to the ground. So, when you finally get there, and
48 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MARCH/APRIL 2024
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