T HAT YEAR’S TOURNA- ment was a hinge point in Masters history in other ways. Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller were at the heights of their di- vergent games, and the crowds were as thick as the anticipation. Jim Murray, the Los Angeles Times columnist and another member of Harper’s informal advisory panel, wrote about covering the tournament by sound rather than sight because he couldn’t get near the action; he quit going soon after, prefer- ring to write the Masters off TV than navigate the growing crush. Among the colourful thousands – many in coats because of the rain and spring chill – Elder found an ally in Gary Player, the defending champion. Elder had joined Player on a golf tour of Apartheid South Africa in 1971, four years before he finally made it behind the hedgerows at Augusta. “Lee had the bravery of a lion,” Player told Golf Di- gest recently. He remained concerned for his friend’s safety at the Masters. “It’s not easy to concentrate on your golf when you have policemen walking
cenzo’s bag for eight, including when the Argentine signed an incorrect scorecard and missed out on a playoff in 1968. Brown, like every caddie who had worked the Masters since its incep- tion, was in-house and Black. Elder had asked to bring his own caddie, Adol- phus “Golf Ball” Hull, but was denied; golfers were not permitted to bring their own until 1983. “All he has to do is stay cool and relax,” Brown told reporters before Elder’s opening round. Elder, dressed in three shades of green, struggled to follow Brown’s advice. His jitters were such that he put his watch in his pocket and his golf balls in his locker before he realised his mistake. “Think I’m nervous?” he said. His first-round playing partner was Gene Littler, an easy-going Californian and “a gentleman at all times,” Harper said. Elder always thought someone, perhaps even Roberts, had done him a kindness by pairing them. They walked together from the clubhouse to the opening tee. “C’mon, partner,” Littler said before he put a reassuring hand
around with you,” Player said. “I tried to give him comfort by sharing my own experiences with him, but worrying about your life is an extremely difficult thing to cope with.” No one was especially anxious about how Elder’s fellow golfers might react. “There wasn’t a colour issue for us,” Hale Irwin, who would finish in a tie for fourth that year, said recently. “I think players just look at the talent, and Lee had the talent to be there.” Harper agreed: “It was a commu- nity,” she said, and she and Elder had been part of it since he earned his Tour card in 1968. Nor was there much malice in most of the patrons, already well-schooled in Augusta National’s civilities. The fear was a rogue one, the single angry man hiding in the galler- ies, separated by only a rope from the subject of his scorn. Along with the security detail, Elder would be accompanied every step by his caddie, Henry Brown, a 36-year-old part-time taxi driver who had worked at Augusta National for more than 20 years; he had carried Roberto de Vi-
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