Magic of Augusta is clear to non believer

OUR interest in the game golf is, to put it mildly, somewhere between modest and non-existent, leaning more towards the latter than the former.

It’s just not our thing. It doesn’t stir us or excite us and there are things about it that actively put us off. The self-seriousness, the at times arcane convoluted rules applied to what on paper should be a simple game.

We know, we know, these are probably the very same things that people love about the game. More power to them too. It’s just not for us. Probably too it’s a class thing. We’re more proletarian – dare we say plebeian? – than patrician, we’re not sure we could or would want to ever feel comfortable in that milieu.

Again that’s just us. That’s not a judgement on those who do and golf has certainly made strides towards democratising over the decades. Then again it’s the sport of Donald John Trump. Most professional golfers are the right of Attila the Hun. The only thing lefty about Phil Mickelson is his golf swing.

Then there’s Augusta National Golf Club. Not exactly a bastion of progressive thinking. Its record on race relations hasn’t exactly been sterling over the decades – although it obviously has improved – and its record on sexism is probably even worse. The club didn’t admit their first female members until 2012.

And, yet, even for us with the views and impressions we have of golf, there’s something special about the place and about the Masters. It’s the big one. The one golf tournament that transcends its sport, even as it happens in a place representative of so much of what makes us recoil from the game in the first place.

Augusta National must be the most beautiful golf course on the planet and we’re speaking purely ascetically – we’re not nearly qualified to know how it plays. The trees, the bushes, the bubbling brooks, the little bridges, the flowers – the azaleas, we do love the azaleas.

An hour watching the Masters is pleasant, it’s relaxing and on Sunday evening as they go down the back nine you’re treated to some of the greatest drama the world of sport has to offer – the rises and falls, the comebacks, the setbacks, the cracks, the heroes, the zeroes, the winners, the losers. Yes the Masters is special.