It’s not the first tournament on the PGA Tour schedule … but it’s first in the hearts and brains of U.S. golf fans.
For many of us, it’s the real Opening Day of golf, notwithstanding that scary-warm day in January when you had to shed layers. Note: Global climate change is clearly a hoax.
People who say “I love golf but I can’t watch it on TV” watch this. On Sunday, they book their tee time early, let the DVR take the morning shift, then fast-forward to the back nine for the leaders, when it really gets good.
It’s The Masters, and it’s here.
I’d love to see Augusta National, and play it, and watch The Masters in person, but with today’s crazy-good electronics, it’s the major made for TV. Only one other golf tournament in the world – The (British) Open Championship – compares as a television spectacle.
If Augusta had any blemishes, the high-def cameras would pick them up and magnify them for the world to see, like the individual pores on the face of a guy like Jason Dufner. But there aren’t any, and the grass and flowers and water features are posed as if for a spring-issue snow globe, with dogwood blossoms standing in for the snowflakes.
One of my golf buddies says Dufner has a hot wife … well, he ought to. He makes enough money. I like the guy, and I hope he wins The Masters.
Tiger Woods isn’t here, and he’s still the story … because he isn’t here. By the back nine Sunday, he won’t be the guy we’re talking about. It might be Jason Day, or McIlroy, or maybe even Mickelson.
Whoever it is, a win, especially if it’s his first, will forever define him. But he will not define The Masters. It is, all by itself, definitive, even if the azaleas look too good to be real.
Leave a Reply