At least on Sunday. Late on Sunday. If I have nothing else to do. The scenery is nice. And the azaleas. Oh the azaleas. I don't even know what an azalea is, I'm not a flower person either, but I've been told the Masters has a lot of them. Azaleas and pimento loaf sandwiches. To be honest, I have no Master's memories outside of the time Tiger Woods won it when he was really young and those other times he won it. All I really know is the Masters is a "tradition unlike any other" and I believe everything Jim Nantz says.
But nothing prepared me for the first time I watched the Masters in high def. It was like getting a new prescription for your glasses. Individual blades of grass. I've become used to watching sports in high definition, and I don't really notice it any more except for when I'm watching the Masters. I still get shocked on how vibrant it is. How impossible some of the greens are. It's amazing what a private course can look like when the members of that course insist that the network covering their tournament make it look like it is a movie or maybe a museum piece.
It may be the closest that sports can get to art. Josh Zerkle , Lead NFL Writer, Bleacher Report -- Masters Week is really the start of the golf season for us, because for those of us that don't live in Florida or the southwest, it really is the start of the golf season for us.
Except that I live in Georgia and have already been out twice this year. So never mind. It's a slow-moving sport played by guys who tend to be people I'd have avoided as a kid -- just as those elitist snobs surely would have avoided the likes of me -- but the Masters? I make it a point to watch the Masters. It's not so much golf as it's pop culture. It's history. Green grass, pretty flowers, hey look, a flagstick.
But aesthetics aside, no course makes players beat themselves as regularly as Augusta National. It fronts as the angel in white, luring you toward the light, assuring you that everything is going to be alright…but a darkness lurks within. The course has teeth. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. The Masters is unique, special, and brings the best out of the best.
In , the Masters was nationally televised for the first time. That was two years later than the U. Those ads have always been limited to just four minutes per hour. Equally amazing is that CBS and Augusta National have maintained their relationship since while always operating on a one-year contract.
Is a guy who takes strokes through the 14th hole of the third round ahead of the player who has as he walks off the third green? It would be maddening. And in , the Masters shifted to something better. Instead of aggregate scores, Clifford Roberts had the leaderboards simply show what hole the top 10 contenders were playing, and where they were in relation to par. Other tournaments quickly adopted what is now the standard live scoring system.
Similarly, the Masters was the first tournament to sprinkle leaderboards throughout the course, instead of having just one near the finishing clubhouse. Without the Masters, how many of us would spell azalea correctly? The last two years, that duty has been performed by Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player, who account for a combined 13 Masters championships.
Whether they hit the fairway or err into the woods, watching them gather on the first tee makes for an incredible snapshot of golfing history. Enjoy our content? Join our newsletter to get the latest in sports news delivered straight to your inbox! Your sports. Join Newsletter. Photo by Ryan Schreiber. When you step foot on Augusta National, all the stresses of our fast-paced modern world melt away. There is not an advertisement in sight. Everything is immaculate. The grass is trimmed so perfectly that it looks more like AstroTurf.
Every fallen leaf is raked up. Every fallen pine needle is swept away. The grounds of the golf course were formerly a nursery before club founder Bobby Jones built the course in the s. This horticultural legacy is still visible on the course today. Many of the trees, which are huge and magnificent, predate the Civil War.
For example, one iconic oak tree behind the Clubhouse and the 60 magnolia trees that line the road approaching it were all planted in the s. A great game of golf is determined as much by athletic talent as it is by great groundskeeping. The Masters does both things better than anywhere else. The other major golf tournaments all rotate cities and venues with every year. This is also true of countless other big sporting events.
The Masters, however, is the only major golf tournament that is played on the same course every year, and always during the first full week of April. The one exception to this rule is the Masters, which due to the Covid pandemic, was postponed to November. Photo by Rory McIlroy. This is a good thing in my opinion for several reasons.
First, this means the event is free from the flashy bidding circus that comes with events that are held in a different city every year. In order to host the Super Bowl, the World Cup, or the Summer or Winter Games, hopeful host cities dump millions if not billions into winning the bid, bringing their venues up to par, and outdoing the previous host.
Often the structure built for the event stands empty once the games end. As the Masters is always held in the same location, the event is much more economically and environmentally sustainable.
Second, holding the tournament in the same place every year grounds the event in the sport itself. Rising stars and unknown hopefuls compete on the very same turf that hundreds of legends before them did. And as the first major tournament of the year, there is ceremonial importance to holding it in the same place. Only the winner of the Masters has that opportunity going forward.
Augusta National Country Club has done an amazing job of lovingly maintaining their many traditions through the years. Their insistence on doing things by the book adds an element of nostalgia to the tournament that is sorely lacking in other sports. Even as the game of golf has progressed with new technology and new stars, the Masters never loses sight of the history and traditions of the sport.
Here are some of my favorite Masters traditions:.
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