Masters will have different feel, look
Nothing about the 84th edition of the Masters will look familiar until the champion slips his arms through a green jacket.
The purple, pink and white blooms of azaleas and dogwoods, which provide such a magnificent accent to Augusta National Golf Club in spring, will give way to Georgia’s autumn hues when the tournament tees off Thursday. The course itself might look familiar with its emerald green fairways, blazing white sand in the bunkers, towering Georgia pines and the still water of Rae’s Creek.
It most certainly won’t sound the same, though, not without thousands upon thousands of spectators framing each hole and sending those piercing roars from all corners of the course.
And it won’t be the same. What makes this Masters unlike any other is the calendar. Golf’s annual rite of spring is now two weeks before Thanksgiving. What is normally the first major each year is now the last. And without its patrons, the cathedral of golf will never be quieter.
“It’s going to be eerie. It’s going to be different,” said Rory McIlroy, still in search of a Masters win to complete the career Grand Slam. “But at least we’re playing for a green jacket.”
Not even that much was certain when the COVID19 pandemic began shutting down sports around the world a week before the first day of spring. The Masters was postponed — a relief to those who initially feared cancellation — and then rescheduled for November.
When the pandemic did not loosen its grip, the club had no choice but to close the gates to its patrons. No need for those green “Golf Traffic” signs posted about the city, no people lining the streets of Washington Road looking for tickets.
There won’t be a Par 3 Contest on Wednesday, with players dressing their children in white coveralls for a last bit of relaxation before the serious business. The first-time players might not know any better. For the veterans, it might not be much different from their scouting trips to Augusta National. They will know what they’re missing, both sights and sounds.
“You walk through the gates at Augusta, there’s that energy, that anticipation,” said McIlroy, making his 10th appearance at
the major where his best result was fourth place five years ago. “There’s still a golf course there. There’s still a golf tournament to be won, and you’ve got to make the most of it.
“But they’re playing,” he said. “And that’s the most important part.”
Tiger Woods had to wait 19 months to play another Masters.
In April 2019, he won his fifth green jacket, as significant as any of his 15 major titles considering where he had been. His one-shot victory last year capped one of the more remarkable comebacks in sports, with his lows including four back surgeries and a DUI arrest from a bad mix of medicine while trying to cope with pain.
Woods ended the year by winning in Japan for his 82nd PGA Tour victory, tying the career record held by Sam Snead. Excitement was building toward this year, especially the Masters, and then it stopped. Woods, keeping a limited schedule to get the most out of his 44-year-old body, had played only two tournaments when the pandemic shut down sport in mid-March.
Then he hardly played at all — one time before an ordinary performance at the PGA Championship, two FedEx Cup playoff events before he missed the cut at the U.S. Open, and one tournament in the two months leading to the Masters. Las Vegas set his odds of tying Jack Nicklaus with a sixth green jacket at 35-1.
“The entire year has been different for all of us,” Woods said. “And my run-up to Augusta is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. That’s just the way it is.”
It’s Augusta National, though, a course he knows as well as any, and so his optimism hasn’t waned.
“My game is definitely better than it was at the U.S. Open,” Woods said last month. “I feel a little bit more prepared, a little bit better, and hopefully that translates into playing the golf course.”
Players are allowed to bring one significant other and a coach. Augusta National members can attend. That’s it. For the Masters, that’s not much at all.
By now, the players should be used to the silence. Spectators were not allowed at the PGA Championship or the U.S. Open, and only recently have a very limited number of fans been allowed in Bermuda and Houston.
However, the quiet be more difficult to ignore at Augusta than anywhere else.
“It echoes there. It travels,” Woods said of the sound of cheers. “You can figure out who’s doing what, and the roars for certain people are louder than others.
“It’s unlike any other place in the world.”
This time, it will be unlike itself, too.