One Year Since My Stroll Around Augusta
It’s been one year. One year since I stepped foot on those hallowed grounds. One year since I saw Amen Corner. One year since I tried to eat my body weight in egg salad sandwiches, washing them down with a cold $4 “domestic beer”. If you want to be technical, I made my first visit to Augusta National Golf Club on April 3, 2017. So it’s been a couple days over a year. But I thought I would wait to post this blog until the opening round of the 2018 Masters was underway.
For years I have been entering the Masters ticket lottery. I’m not positive on the exact year I began trying to get tickets to the holy grail of golf events, but I know it was back when you still needed to send a self addressed stamped envelope to the club so they could send you an official ticket lottery form, which you filled out and mailed back to the club.
As the process evolved to include online entry, myself, along with the Honza brothers, Josh and Matt, a pair of larger than life close friends, began entering every year with the stipulation that if one of us scored the four practice round tickets, that we would all go and ask one more to join the group.
Year after year. No luck. We always got the disappointing email. “We have completed the random selection process for (year) Masters tournament tickets and regret to inform you that your application was not selected”.
The emails always hit our in-box on the same day, and the text thread would begin.
JOSH: No Masters tickets for me this year.
MATT: No dice here either.
ELI: I got jobbed as well.
And so it went. Every June we’d get the email. We even went as far as signing up girlfriends, parents, and other non-golf interested friends hoping they would be drawn so we could take the tickets off their hands. NOTHING. This went on for close to a decade. Than came June 2016.
MATT: Another year, another Masters let down for me.
ELI: How could our luck be this bad year after year?
JOSH: We’re going to the Masters.
When I first read the text, I thought he was making a very unfunny joke. And if one of the two Honza’s would make a gag like this, it would definitely be Josh. He has a sense of humor like that. But then I began to think, no way he would do this to us. He’s not THAT guy.
JOSH: No. Seriously. Kristen got selected. We’re going.
Kristen is Josh’s longtime girlfriend and he had began signing her up a few years prior just to increase our odds of getting tickets. She got the email, and Josh confirmed it. We had four tickets to the Monday practice round at Augusta National. We were finally going.
Planning ensued, we added Josh and Matt’s cousin Chris to the foursome. Decided we were going to play a round of golf while we were there, picked a place to stay. We had everything set.
We flew to Atlanta on Thursday. Rented a car and drove to our rented VRBO on Lake Oconee, which is basically right in between Atlanta and Augusta. A huge lake, with a resort and plenty of golf options. We thought about playing Reynolds Plantation, but it was a little more than we wanted to spend. We wanted to save as much cash as possible for Masters gear. So we chose the Harbor Club. Beautiful course with tons of elevation changes you simply don’t get out of the DFW topography. A course I would highly recommend that also won’t break the bank. The whole weekend was filled with awesome dock-sitting beer drinking weather. We did a lot of both. Mainly Yuengling, which is available there. It’s cheap, and it’s delightful.
As the weekend progressed, the weather forecast for Monday continued to deteriorate. Friday 30%, Saturday 60%, Sunday 80%. Although most of the forecasts called for “afternoon showers and thunderstorms”. We basically knew we were getting rain. It was just a matter of how long it would hold off. How much time would we get at Augusta National?
Masters Monday. Tickets in hand. We’re out the door at 5:00 AM. We wanted to be on the property when the gates opened. One thing about the Masters, you’re almost completely cut off from the outside world. Society has become so dependent on cell phones, when we don’t have them, there’s almost a feeling of insecurity. There are no cell phones allowed inside the gates. You can take cameras (during practice rounds), but absolutely no phones. Last thing I checked before we started the walk to the gates was the updated forecast.
Showers with a chance of strong afternoon thunderstorms.
We had a window, but we had no idea how long it would be, because there’s no way to pull up a radar while you’re on property. As we walked through the gates. A drizzle began. “There’s no way this can be happening. At least give me a couple hours. That’s all I want”, I remember thinking.
7AM. Through the gates. Immediately bypass all the hubbub around the clubhouse, we wanted to see as much of Alister MacKenzie’s masterpiece as we could. The idea was to walk the entire course 1 to 18. Anything we got to see beyond that was church. We easily scampered through the front nine, making a brief stop for sandwiches and beers. We also stopped at the merch headquarters and loaded up on gear. Yes, it cost us some valuable on-course time, but when you Augusta, you aren’t leaving without a haul of swag.
We made the command decision to work our way backwards on the incoming nine. Starting on 18 and working back to 10. After walking 18 and 17, we sat at 16 to watch a few groups skip balls across the pond. After about 15 minutes there, a rather large, cold gust of wind came roaring by.
Here it comes, and we still hadn’t seen Amen Corner. The front moving in was our signal to double time it. We started making our way to the 11-12-13 area. No more than 10 steps into the walk to Amen Corner. The horn. That damn horn. The one that let us know our time on the course was almost over. The horn was followed by an announcement.
“Ladies and gentleman. Severe weather is about to move into the area. We ask that you begin to make your way to the nearest exit.”
This can’t be happening. We knew it was going to, but somewhere deep within I honestly thought the golf Gods would give us more time. It wasn’t like we could come back tomorrow. We had Monday tickets. That’s it. We were flying out the following morning. Even if we wanted to stay, and had enough money to scalp Tuesday tickets, it was going to be too much of a headache rescheduling the travel. We’re screwed.
We huddle up and began to think about an exit strategy. The way I saw it, there was no way they were giving that announcement to clear the golf course with less than an hour’s notice. There are some 30,000 people that have to find exits. They have to give you some notice to get everyone off the property in time. Again, there’s no way to know just how far the storms are away, because you can’t check. I was willing to roll the dice and say we had at minimum one hour before any potentially dangerous weather. So, we decided we were going to see Amen Corner, even if it meant getting rained on, or in my case, killed by lightening (I mean, what a place to go!). We decided to make the walk. We saw White Dogwood, Golden Bell, and Azalea. We weren’t there for long, but I could cross it off my bucket list. As we took the obligatory photo in front of number 12, a voice in the background
“Ladies and gentleman, you have to head to the exits. You cannot stay here. Please head to the exits NOW!”
We knew this gentleman was done with the people meandering around. It was time to go. As we worked our way out, we saw a couple of the remaining holes we hadn’t yet seen. And as we approached the 10, 18, clubhouse area again, the sky opened up. So did the sea of green and white Masters logo umbrellas. The club probably paid for the winners share of the purse just from umbrella sales on the Monday before the tournament.
The walk took forever. When you have that many people flooding the exits, it takes a while. The depression set in about the time we walked back by the practice range. This was it. There was no way they were re-opening the course. We had seen all we were going to see. We arrived at 7AM, and were back in the car at 12:30PM.
As we got back to the car, every fiber of clothing soaked through, we saw the first flash of lightening and heard the first clap of thunder. Signaling the end of my first walk around Augusta.
It lasted 5 and a half hours. And as a golf fan and history geek, the best 5 and a half hours you could imagine. Sure, I wish we’d gotten the rest of the day there to see everything again. To get closer to the clubhouse and see Magnolia Lane. But it wasn’t to be. Despite the golf Gods not favoring me on that particular Monday, I do tend to believe they are just and loving, and will present me another chance to go one day. And if they don’t, I understand and I appreciate the time I got to spend there. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Augusta National is that special.
