Wow, wow, wow!  What a Masters!  A record score of 20 under by new champ Dustin Johnson; an amazing performance of shooting all four rounds in the 60s by uber-talented Aussie, Cameron Smith – the first man ever to achieve that feat; and a record number of hours that yours truly sat on an ever-broadening backside and immersed self in the whole November Masters vibe and experience.

And I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about it all.  Actually, that’s not quite true.  A McIlroy win would be the cherry on top for this particular blogger.  Alas, an opening albatross of a 75 meant that despite being the best player on the course for the last three rounds Rory could only manage a joint 5th place.  All very laudable, but it’s probably almost as tough being a Rory fan at the moment as it is being Rory.  Perhaps he needs to work with a performance coach – Dave Aldred comes to mind.

In the recent past, Aldred has worked with Luke Donald, whom he steered to No 1 in the world, and Francesco Molinari who became Open champion two years ago and the only European to win five points out of five at the Ryder Cup.  I recall a conversation I had with Denis Pugh, Francesco’s coach, a while back when I quizzed him about Aldred’s methods.  It boiled down to every practice shot being competitive and with a consequence, just as it is on the course.  By all accounts it’s a brutal regime, designed to knock the player off balance, push all his buttons and tire him mentally, all the while demanding precision shots.  The reasoning is that your practice should be infinitely more taxing than anything you may meet in tournament play.

I suspect there’s only so much a player can take of that and as Denis succinctly put it, “If you actually LIKE Dave when you’re working with him, then he’s not doing his job.”  Perhaps this would benefit Rory but I’m not sure I could ever see him turning himself over so completely to any coach, performance or otherwise.

An unexpected bonus of this edition of the Masters was the hitherto unheard of use of drones at Augusta National.  They provided stunning photography and gave those of us at home a real appreciation of the undulating landscape, slopes and angles that the players have to face.  There is no doubt these pictures were enabled and enhanced by the fact that there were no patrons present. This year the required space to manipulate these little beauties was readily available without their irritating buzz being within earshot of the protagonists.  We were treated to the camera swooping in at ground level, giving us a worm’s eye view of the examination test – something that may well be impossible when those slopes are once again cloaked with thousands of patrons.  What’s the betting the green jackets will have patented a noiseless drone come next April?

Sunday was a very special day in the life of DJ, but also, in a much more modest way, it was a good day for me.  Apart from winning the sweep and looking forward to buying some very nice red wine, I received a call from the WestwoodOne radio crew from on site at Augusta.  We have worked together at the Masters for the last four years but the company is not sanctioning any international travel at the moment.  Neither am I, of course and I did enjoy my week at home but it was the highlight of my day to hear from them all.  Here’s hoping next April isn’t too early to expect to be able to travel.

As if I hadn’t overdosed enough on golf I also found time to turn to the Aramco Saudi Ladies’ International Presented by Public Investment Fund.  That really trips off the tongue, doesn’t it?  The Royal Greens Golf & Country Club looked spectacular and the demanding, closing par-5 18th hole was one of the best holes I’ve ever seen in a play-off.  It was the ultimate risk-reward test where even the lay-up was scary.  I was rooting for Welsh player Lydia Hall, who finished a creditable sixth behind the multi-talented Dane Emily Pedersen, who produced a stunning birdie in extra time to edge out the ever-consistent Georgia Hall.

I hadn’t really any intention of tuning in to the tournament because I’m not really certain that I approve of the Tour being there.  I’m well aware of the potential positives – if they do indeed happen.  We’ll wait and see.  Neither do I blame those players who have travelled there.  After all, a $1,000,000 prize fund dangled in front of players who struggle to have enough tournaments a year in which to hone their games can be very persuasive.  There is a second team tournament taking place at the same course this week and I will watch with interest to see if ultimately this liaison proves to be more than “sportswashing” on behalf of the Saudis, i.e. using sport and large prize funds to attract global goodwill while not addressing an appalling human rights record.  However, communication and  interaction CAN lead to great breakthroughs…..so, fingers crossed.

Our bubble has reduced back down now that Patricia has returned home to Staffordshire.  We will both miss her, but NOT the inordinate amount of time she spends endlessly recycling every plastic container within sight.  Each is stripped of its paper label, which is then neatly folded ready for its designated bin.  Each plastic pot and lid is washed and put to drain on the rack and the mountains of creased and folded tin foil “ready to be sorted” have thankfully diminished.

Could this be the new definition of “wasting one’s time” I wonder?  Be that as it may, life has, for the moment, returned to its Covid-normal.

First, an apology and a correction.  Last week I had Peter McEvoy making the cut at the Masters in 1977, taking as gospel something I read in a bible, usually reliable, devoted to the amateur game.  I knew McE, who’s now 67 and was given a handicap of plus 2 under the new system, had won the Amateur Championship twice but I couldn’t remember the dates and didn’t bother to double-check.   He won in 1977 and 1978 and it was in April 1978 that he first played at Augusta National and completed all 72 holes.

Belatedly in checking mode, I rooted out Dermot Gilleece’s splendid book Breaking 80, The life and times of Joe Carr:  “Joe appeared in three US Masters at Augusta, becoming the first Irishman to play in the event in 1967.  In that year he was paired with defending champion Jack Nicklaus for the opening two rounds.  Nicklaus failed to make the cut while Joe went on to play the final 36.  The following year Joe was paired with Arnold Palmer.  He too failed to make the cut as Joe sailed into the final two days.”

That led to a quip from the austere, autocratic chairman:  “When we sat down to eat on the Friday night of the tournament,” Joe recalled, “Cliff Roberts [said chairman] said:  ‘Well, now.  We’re thinking of inviting Carr back next year but who in the name of God will play with him?’ So they gave me Sam Snead in 1969 and neither of us qualified.”

Christy O’Connor Snr had turned down several invitations to play in the Masters because it didn’t make financial sense to him to travel to America for just one event but Joe, a successful businessman, could afford to go.  “In fact,” he said, “I became a member of Augusta National in 1967 and I retained my membership for about five years.  But the annual subscription was about $7,500 which I found difficult to justify, even though I could afford it at the time.  It was a lot of money in those days for what was only an annual visit.”

That’s the trouble with research and opening books – you start reading and it’s hard to stop.

It wasn’t Tiger Woods’s week at Augusta this year – the defending champion racked up a 10 at the par 3 12th, the hole that was so kind to him last year and then had five birdies in the last six holes – but he has an extra special event to look forward to just before Christmas, on the 19th and 20th of December.  He’ll be playing with his son Charlie, who’s 11 years old, in the PNC Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club Orlando, Grande Lakes Resort.  It’s a jolly, fiercely competitive get-together for major champions and their rellies, a 36-hole scramble for the Willie Park Trophy, with a purse of more than a million dollars.

It was for fathers and sons originally, won by Raymond Floyd and Raymond Jr for the first three years but the event has evolved:  Annika Sorenstam will be playing with her father Tom for the second successive year, Justin Thomas will be playing with his dad Mike and Gary Player with a grandson.  Bernhard Langer, the indestructible, who last week became the oldest player to play all four rounds at the Masters, will be defending the title he and son Jason won last year.  As far back as 2005 and 2006, Langer won the title with son Stefan, then he and Jason won in 2014.

Tiger’s body is creaking more than a bit but he’s still a long way short of being one of the over-50s.  If he ever does decide to join the old boys – and it’s unlikely he’d make more than the odd guest appearance – I hope he’d do it to visit new places and try courses he’d never been to.  Rosapenna in Donegal probably won’t make his list but it should.  I haven’t been for years, which is my loss and I look forward to going and taking in all the changes when we’re allowed to travel again.  No pandemic has lasted for ever….

Next August, 20-22, all being well, we’ll be able to enjoy the Irish Legends Presented by The McGinley Foundation at the Old Tom Morris Links at Rosapenna Hotel & Golf Resort.  I’m reliably informed by irishgolfdesk.com that this is the first professional seniors event to be staged in Ireland since 2010, when Marc Farry, of France, won the Handa Irish Senior Open at Carton House.  The European Seniors Tour, which gave up the ghost this year, wiped out by COVID-19, is being re-invented as the Legends Tour and as well as the professional names, amateurs will be a key part of the revival thanks to the Alliance Pro-Am format.  Get your game in to some sort of shape, scrape together a bit of dosh and you could be out there with the not-so-old-codgers like Pauls Lawrie and McGinley, Woosie, who knows who.  Something to look forward to.  As well as Ireland, they’re scheduled to play at La Moye in Jersey, Trevose in Cornwall, Sunningdale in Surrey (The Senior Open Presented by Rolex – lots on Tik-Tok presumably) and Formby in Lancashire/on Merseyside, to mention just a few of the venues.

I’m home now after spending a few days in my bubble with Maureen and Brian, being spoiled and pampered while gorging on golf from Georgia.  Back to catering for myself, writing shopping lists, pouring my own gins, doing the washing, contemplating the cobwebs, keeping my distance…..  Ah, it’s good to be back!

 

 

 

I was supposed to be on site at the Masters this year, nudging my number of visits to that iconic venue into double figures.  I think I would have found it refreshing to be in Georgia in November, as opposed to April, just to see how different things might be from the spring norm.  I’d have been very curious to experience Augusta National Golf Club a little more as the members do – in other words, as the beautiful, undulating, enormous and largely empty expanse of greenery that it is.

As anticipation has grown leading into this final major of 2020 there has been much chat and speculation in the build-up to the off.  Just how differently will the course look, play and feel?  Will experience count for even more or will the autumn date prove an equaliser?  Perhaps we’ll see a player making his Masters debut don the green jacket for the first time since 1979 and Fuzzy Zoeller’s victory?  That is certainly a possibility and with first-timers of the calibre of Collin Morikawa, Matt Wolff, Cameron Champ and Scottie Scheffler in the field I wouldn’t bet against it.

There’s no denying that this Masters will, indeed, be different, very different.  There’ll be no ropes, no grandstands, no cheese pimento sandwiches, no Pinkerton guards on duty at the greens, no enormous queues outside the merchandise shop, no huge traffic jams on Washington Road and, perhaps most tellingly of all, no patrons.

“Patrons” is the preferred Augusta National Golf Club term for the colourful rivers of spectators that flow into and around the golf course for seven consecutive days from dawn to dusk.  They are an integral, shifting, kaleidoscopic backdrop to this major, skilfully moulded into neat, regulated seating areas around the greens so they complement any picture that may find itself framed by a photographer’s lens.  Visually, they add to the overall look but it is audibly that they add a unique, and potentially influential quality to this tournament.

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The course, frequently referred to as the “cathedral in the pines” has provided some of the greatest moments in our sport, all played out to the accompaniment of that unique Masters soundtrack of spine-tingling roars echoing across the back nine on Sunday.  The galleries are an ever-present audible scoreboard for the contenders who can pinpoint the rolling cheers to exactly the right hole and, often, to the very player making a move.  This doesn’t generally happen at the other majors.  However, the combination of annual visits to Augusta, a dipping and climbing topography over the back nine and shifting breezes funnelling through corridors of pines provides an all-around sound that can either inspire or destroy a player.  And this is one of the main reasons I wouldn’t be surprised if our next Masters champion were to be playing at Augusta for the very first time.  That challenge to maintaining focus at the sharp end of the tournament will be absent.

One place I will not be absent from is my spot in front of the telly.  Exercise will be limited to the route from that spot to the kitchen and back again – and perhaps I won’t even have to do that too often as Patricia has joined our bubble for the duration.  We kicked off our week with a seven-person Zoom call to choose five men each.  Playing cards were drawn to decide order of choice and a modest sum lobbed into the virtual pot from which the runner-up will get their stake back and the winner will take the rest.  In the diary each day is a 5.30pm (GMT) Zoom drink together with certain of our number insisting that there is only one drink to consider – the famed Pink Azalea!  My better half won’t touch that with a bargepole, but for those of you who’d like to try it, here’s the recipe:-

 

The Masters Pink Azalea

1 part lime/lemon juice

1 part pineapple juice

3 parts gin

Grenadine to colour pink

 

A word of warning though – don’t indulge in too many too early or you’ll fall asleep and miss the end of the day’s play!

So, it’s certainly going to be a little different for me this year.  It puts me in mind of the Irish rugby fans who went to Edinburgh for the Six Nations match against Scotland.  They decided to have a stroll down Rose Street and have a pint or two before making their way to the ground.  Once ensconced in the pub the craic with the Scots was mighty and they were just about to drag themselves away to Murrayfield when the publican asked them why they were leaving.  They explained they were off to the match and were astonished when the landlord informed them he doubted they’d make it on time.  When they enquired just why he thought that, back came the succinct reply, “Because the match is in Dublin!”  So, of course, there was nothing for it but to park themselves down again and watch the match on the box surrounded by the Scots.  A new ritual was born that day – the Irish lads had such a wonderful time on that occasion they repeated that routine for many years to come – including the years the match was in Dublin!

Perhaps this year will signal the start of a new Masters ritual for me…

 

Hooray, hooray, the Masters is under way at last, a few months late plus several extra hours because of rain, lots and lots of rain.  That meant that Mo and I got in a good long walk on a beautiful autumn morning without missing any of the action.

And, boy, was there lots of action.  Right from the 2-tee start.  I said I’d prefer to start at the 10th in my first round but Mo decided not, she’d start at the 1st on day one.  What we did agree on was that having the 10th, 11th and 12th as our opening holes would test the nerve, skill and equanimity of the very best.  Not to mention the 13th.

Bryson DeChambeau, the monster masher of the moment, was all over the place, including at the par-5 13th, a drive and a flick for a man of his length.  He took 7 but then began to show that he’s no one-trick pony, that he has all the skills needed to be a Masters champion.  For one thing, don’t forget how well he putted when he won the US Open.

Tiger started well; so did Louis Oosthuizen; and we were cheering for Shane, who was playing with the defending champ and a very nervy Andy Ogletree, the US Amateur champion.  Lee Westwood and Paul Casey started like express trains and it was lovely to see the golf course au naturel, without the clutter of grandstands and crowds, a very different look.  Apart from anything else it meant that we could spot one or two of our journalist friends lucky enough to be out there following the action in person.

I was doing some more rooting in the photo archives and came across some pictures of the media centre – not the current one, which I haven’t seen but the previous state-of-the art press palace, although I was never sure how much attention they’d paid to the journalists who had to work there for the week.  For instance, if you were stuck at the back, as I was, you needed your binoculars to read the scoreboard because the numbers were titchy – and I was a lot younger in those days.  And there wasn’t a lot of elbow room, so I developed a slightly precarious vertical filing/balancing system.  It was amazing how much paper you accumulated during a week of interviews and stats.

When Tiger came out on tour, there was an ad line that proclaimed “I’m Tiger Woods”, so in the run-up to the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond, the Daily Record embarrassed Gordon Simpson, then their golf correspondent, with a picture of him decomposing at his computer and the words, “I”m Gordon Simpson”.  Well, of course, his friends and colleagues couldn’t stop taking the mickey and at the Open we lined up with our Gordon Simpson tee shirts.  Dai had a special one, bought by me, embroidered with the words, “I also know Gordon Simpson”.  Sorry, but it still makes me laugh.

And, having found it, there was no way I could leave out this pic of Dai with Ian Woosnam in Oswestry, testing out Woosie’s champion’s dinner choice of Welsh lamb baked in hay.  Am pretty sure the US Department of Agriculture vetoed it coming in to the country.  This year, apparently, Tiger looked to his upbringing in southern California and lined up steak, chicken fajitas, sushi and shushimi.  No customs problems there presumably.

Just look at those smiles:  it shows you that it’s not just players and their family and close friends who are ecstatic when they win the Masters – or any major; the ripples of joy and delight spread far and wide and never fade!

It wouldn’t be the Masters without a sweep and there are seven of us in ours this year.  One of our number left the selection of her five players to her 6-year old grandson, who used tried and tested methods like “that shirt’s a nice colour”; “let’s have that man with a big tummy”; and “that’s a great name”.   She wasn’t keen on her chances but four of her men were early starters, so got their first round finished despite the delay and three of them were under par.  Out of the choices of babes…..

There was heartening news at the beginning of the week when Augusta National announced that next year, all being well, Lee Elder, the first African-American golfer to play in the Masters, in 1975, will join Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as an honorary starter.  The club will sponsor scholarships in Elder’s name at Paine College, an historically Black school in Augusta and fund a women’s golf team at the college.  Changed times indeed and not before time.

Pre-Elder, Charlie Sifford, the first Black inductee to the World Golf Hall of Fame, won on tour but was never invited to play in the Masters and even as attitudes changed, he swore that he would never set foot on the grounds.  Nor did he.  He died in 2015, still furious.  I doubt he forgave and there was no reason for him to forget.

Just in case you’re wondering, you can have a chance to win the beautiful golf shoes at the top of the piece by visiting www.albartross.com – NB the spelling is correct.  The shoes are hand-painted by Caitlin Fielder, who was born in Rotorua but now lives in Spain.

As I finish this, they’re showing the film of the 1980 Masters on the telly and it’s hard to believe that it’s 40 years since Seve swashbuckled his way to his first green jacket.  Ole, ole, ole.