They are the iconic shots that every golf fan remembers, the marvellous Masters moments at Augusta that leave mere mortals awestruck.
Consider Bubba Watson’s banana bender around the corner from deep in the woods in 2012 to win the green jacket from Louis Oosthuizen, who himself conjured a miracle when scoring an albatross on the par 5 second hole named Pink Dogwood.
As the commentator intoned, “This one could be very nice. Oh ‘Come to papa’. YEEESSS”.
There is the chip shot during the 1987 playoff on the 11th, named White Dogwood, from Larry Mize that broke the heart of Greg Norman and many Australians.
Think the tee shot from Jack Nicklaus on 16 in the 1986 Masters. And Tiger Woods on the same hole 33 years later that effectively helped him seal a win for the ages in 2019.
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Over the next week, as this year’s field seeks to enter the annals of the famous tournament, those spine-tingling moments will be replayed in all their glory during the live coverage.
About 18 hours after the Masters is complete, another group lives their childhood dreams, with more mortal members of the media granted access to the course via a ballot.
It is pot luck, with the writers receiving notice on the weekend of their good fortune. They are required to attend a special briefing, pay heed to every guideline associated with their invitation and then set forth on Monday on the golfing adventure of a lifetime.
Mindful that many Australians who watch The Masters are regular golfers, foxsports.com.au decided to ask a lucky quartet what it was like to live out the fantasy round.
The challenges abound, not least because the pins are left in the same place as they were in the championship round on Sunday.
Securing golf clubs can be a trick. So too shoes. Avoiding the temptations at the famous Tbonz Steakhouse which caters to fans and players alike after the 72nd is up there as well. Then there is the task of finding a driver responsible enough to follow the strict guidelines of the Augusta Golf Club to ensure you arrive on time.
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News Corp Australia journalist Julian Linden, Martin Blake from Golf Australia, Queensland Reds media man Jim Tucker and AAP scribe Darren Walton explain what it is like to play Augusta as a regular golfer, from the deceptive camera angles to beers before Hogan’s Bridge, from using the locker of a champion to using the facilities on course.
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Julian Linden (2011)
News Corp Australia
First course: Bathurst Golf Club
Primary course: Wollongong Golf Club
Handicap: N/A
Score: Did not score
For a moment on Julian Linden’s first visit to Augusta in 2011, he was on the cusp of the greatest sporting experience an Australian golf fan could imagine.
Based in New York at the time as Sports Editor for the Americas for Reuters, Linden’s good mate Larry Fine had entered him in the ballot for Augusta and, to his astonishment, his lucky number came up.
But through to the 72nd hole on an spine-tingling Sunday, the possibility lingered that Linden might be about to report on an Australian first as Adam Scott and Jason Day launched dynamic bids to secure the Green Jacket.
“One of the tricky bits about winning the ballot is that you are so excited about playing the course, it is almost hard to concentrate on the final round of the Masters, which you are supposed to be covering,” Linden said.
“It was a day when Adam Scott and Jason Day both made a great charge and I think they teed off on the 71st hole as co-leaders. So I thought all of my chickens were coming home to roost, but that was the year that Charles Schwartzel reeled off birdies on the last four holes to win.
“So while I was excited, there was also an air of disappointment because I had been so close to seeing an Aussie win, an Aussie break that drought. It was like, ‘Oh no, the Masters curse continues.’”
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The Bathurst bulldog was so unprepared for the prospect of actually playing at Augusta that he was forced to source everything before his round on the Monday morning.
He opted against drowning his sorrow at the near-miss by Scott and Day at Tbonz and was in bed reasonably early awaiting a 7am alarm and a dash to a local golf club to hire clubs, purchase golf clubs and source suitable clothing for the round of a lifetime.
“Every other day as a journalist, you come in through the public entry, which is on another road, but when you have a ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, you come up the driveway of Magnolia Lane … and it is like driving to the White House. It is phenomenal,” he said.
“When you win the lottery, you get to use the Champions Locker Room, the place where only Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo, whoever, are allowed into, so it is an amazing privilege.”
After enjoying a southern breakfast, Linden said, players head to the practice fairway, where their caddy, clubs and a pyramid of 100 balls are waiting.
Waiting at the first tee is the club chairman, who welcomes the players and poses for photographs.
Players still feeling peckish after breakfast, or seedy after a later finish at Tbonz, can order steak sandwiches or burgers at different stops and enjoying a beer or two while playing is far from frowned on.
Photographs for social media are a no-go but personal shots are allowed, so too any that might feature in a news article about the experience.
“It is such an experience you want to do everything while you can and it gets to the point where there are a couple of holes with toilets on there and you want to go just to see what they are like. Not surprisingly, even the toilets are magnificent,” Linden said.
“I’m pretty sure it is the 12th, because blokes have been on the course for three hours and they are going to want to have a slash.”
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Linden is an occasional golfer and rather than test his ability against the card, he ultimately opted instead to take up the offer from his caddy to play shots from areas where the greats of the game had created memorable Masters moments.
“You get seduced by the beauty of Augusta but it has got teeth that bite you all the time,” he said.
“The first thing that strikes you about the course is how wide the fairways are. Everything about the course is perfectly pristine and gorgeous and wonderful.
“The first fairway, it seems like you can’t miss it. It is as wide as a football field. But it turns out that you can. And because there are a higher number of doglegs than usual, if you slice and go right, you make these holes so much longer than usual.
“We played some shots from famous landmarks … and there are a number of holes there where it is like a mirage. You aim left for it to come back right, even though your eyes are telling you something different. It is very tricky.”
Linden’s favourite hole is the famous par 3 12th named Golden Bell, which sits in the midst of Amen Corner.
“It is every golfer’s dream hole to play. It is just gorgeous,” Linden said.
“You can hit a seven or eight iron and it is a pretty nice easy swing and it is the shot we have all seen on TV a million times before. But it has a really tricky landing area.
“It is a very wide green, as wide as a cricket pitch, but your actual landing area, if you short you trickle into the pond and if you go long, you bounce into the brush behind.”
The 18th is also especially challenging, Linden said, and not just because of the test it provides your golf. There is also the sinking realisation that, having loved every aspect of the course, the prospect is very real you will never get the opportunity to play Augusta again.
Darren Walton (2023)
Australian Associated Press
First course: Coffs Harbour Golf Club, New South Wales
Primary course: Carnarvon Golf Club, Sydney
Handicap: 10
Score: 97
The instructions were spelled out to Darren Walton by the officials of the Augusta Golf Club last year as he prepared for the biggest round of his life. Every order must be followed.
“They give you a nice invitation and say that you have to be there one hour before. It was not 59 minutes before. It was not 61 minutes before. You must be there exactly an hour before,” he said.
“Brent Read (Sydney journalist) drove me up Magnolia Lane in the hire car and I was warned that he had to exit the property immediately after dropping me off.”
After arriving, Walton was taken to the Champions’ Locker room and was issued with the locker used by Canadian Mike Weir when he won the Masters 20 years earlier.
The long-serving AAP journalist, who is also covering this year’s event, felt nervous initially but “honestly thought I was playing at my home course once I settled down, because it is not overly long and the fairways are quite forgiving, although the greens are treacherous.”
Walton managed a couple of pars and reached the turn in a reasonable position, having shot 43 for the front nine, but his excitement got the better of him at the break.
“I felt like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, that I had won the golden ticket. And after I had two pars on the front nine, I felt like ‘Augusta’ Gloop. But then Amen Corner got me,” Walton said.
“I had a couple of beers at the half-way mark and then rushed to the tee box on the tenth … and was completely seduced by the beauty that is the beast. It was the most beautiful sight in my life. It is just a majestic hole, but it is an absolute monster.”
Walton’s wheels fell off. He triple-bogied the 10th, named Camellia, and then double-bogied the 11th, which is called White Dogwood. And he was stunned when arriving at the 12th hole, the famous par three named Golden Bell.
“The most amazing thing is that … when you are watching on TV, it looks like a drop shot, like they are hitting downhill. But that is actually an illusion,” he said.
“The tee box is below the green and you are actually hitting to an elevated green. That, to me, is something I could not believe.”
Australian journalist Graeme Agars, who celebrated his 40th Masters last year, had advised Walton to take two clubs more than he might think he needed on the 141m hole.
But he did not listen and ended up in the water. A double-bogey there further rattled his confidence and then Walton arrived at 15, a 500m beast named Firethorn. It proved prickly for Walton, who recorded a nine as his hopes of breaking 90 fell away.
“It is the most difficult hole on the course for an amateur player because it doesn’t matter where you are, your second shot is treacherous,” he said.
“I laid up with a nine iron because I wasn’t prepared to go 230 yards (210m) over the pond … but all of a sudden you are on a downhill lie trying to hit a wedge on and I did what Jason Day did last year in the second round, which was the beginning of the end for him, and plumped one straight in the water. I planted another one in the water and finally went down and had a drop … and chipped on for an ugly nine.”
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Martin Blake (2012)
Golf Australia. Formerly The Age.
First course: Stawell Golf Club, Victoria
Primary course: Yarra Yarra Golf Club, Melbourne
Handicap: 11 (13 when he played Augusta)
Score: 98
On his third trip to Georgia to cover The Masters, Martin Blake had just returned from several hours on the course tracking the Australian contingent on Saturday when all hell broke loose.
Officials were running from all directions to let him know that his name had been called in the ballot and that he would need to get cracking in order to guarantee the invitation stood.
Part of him wondered if he was being set up for an elaborate prank but, sure enough, Blake’s name was on the ballot board alongside fellow Aussie scribe Jim Tucker.
There were a couple of obstacles to overcome.
It was the first time he had travelled to Augusta without his golf clubs, so the Melbourne-based journalist jumped into a cab and visited local courses, where he was ultimately saved by a club pro who was so amazed by the opportunity that he leant his own clubs.
Standing on the first tee the day after Bubba Watson hit one of the most remarkable shots in Masters history to edge Louis Oosthuizen on the second playoff hole, Blake had another problem. So thick was the southern drawl of his caddy, he could not understand a word.
“Then again, he could not understand me either, but we managed to get by using a form of sign language,” Blake said.
Playing from the Members tees, Blake started well when thumping a drive straight down the middle of the 406m par 4 called Tea Olive, which helped him secure an opening par.
“It was very nerve-wracking standing on the first tee … but my memories of the day are just looking at Jim and we were just laughing with each other,” Blake said.
“We were pinching ourselves. ‘Is this ever real? Is this actually happening?’.”
Then writing for The Age, he said he fluked a par on the par 3 16th hole, named Redbud, despite slicing a ball far to the right and into the trees.
“I’d never seen anyone end up there and I had to hit it back towards the water, straight down hill towards the water, but somehow managed to stop it on the green and make par,” he said.
The one hole Blake wanted to play perfectly was the famous 12th hole, a 141m par 3 known as Golden Bell. But the occasion got the better of him.
“We stopped on Hogan’s Bridge and got our photos taken on the bridge as we came off the 11th, and then I proceeded to knock one straight into the drink,” he said.
“I flared it straight out to the right and anyone who has watched it will know that the creek runs at an angle and it bounced straight into the water.
“I dropped it and ended up in a nasty little spot and I flubbed it straight back into the water, so I ended up taking six on the most famous par three in the world. That was not ideal.”
Similarly to his colleagues, Blake said the undulation of the course is something that is not easily identifiable for those who are watching on television and that the condition of the course really “has to be seen to be believed”.
“There is not even a weed there. And you really do feel like you are on some sort of hallowed ground,” Blake said.
“I remember that on the fourth, I took a huge divot and thought, ‘This is sacrilege. I’ve dug up Augusta’. But I think the course is playable … from the members’ tees.
“It is just like the old Lee Westwood line, like ‘Disneyland for Adults’. It was just brilliant, one of the highlights of my life and I can tell you I have dined out on it since.”
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Jim Tucker (2012)
Queensland Reds communications, formerly Courier-Mail
First course: Warringah Golf Club, Sydney
Primary course : Indooroopilly Golf Club, Brisbane
Handicap: 13. Now off 9
Score: 92
Jim Tucker’s nerves were already jangling when he stepped onto the first tee alongside Martin Blake, a good mate, for his dream round at Augusta in 2012.
Once again, the strict edict associated with the invitation to play Augusta required some quick thinking.
Tucker, who filed his last story on that year’s Masters at 1.30am on Monday morning, had arrived in Georgia without any golf clubs but ventured into the garage of his rental house and found a set owned by the son of their landlord.
Another challenge came with actually finding a way to Gate 3, Augusta Golf Club, to take up the invitation on Monday.
The club made it clear that arriving via a cab for such an auspicious moment would not do and so Tucker, who had never driven in the United States before, hired a car and picked up Blake on the way.
“It was like ‘Driving Miss Daisy’. It was quite a fraught trip just to get to the course and then I was worried I would take out a magnolia tree on Magnolia Lane,” he said.
Once there, however, the geniality of the club came to the fore.
Tucker was shown to the Champions’ Locker Room _ he used the locker of Fuzzy Zoeller, who won the Masters at his first attempt in 1979 _ and then invited to breakfast.
A visit to the pro shop was also in order. Tucker is right-handed but he putts left-handed, not that it mattered because the borrowed kit was without a putter.
The club pro recommended the latest model Scotty Cameron putter but, as Tucker said, it scarcely did him any favours, with the Brisbane-based media specialist having 40 putts in his round of 92.
Aside from the magnificence of the course, a couple of memories stand out for Tucker.
His caddy was named Warren Leffler, who had played on lower-tier tours and, “after some prodding from his fellow caddies”, divulged that he had once scored an albatross on the 500m 15th name Firethorn.
Playing alongside Tucker and Blake was a professional named Bob Casper, whose father Billy Casper won the 1970 Masters and also two US Opens in a successful career.
Bob Casper, “a lovely man” who shot 33 on the back nine, had brought a decent camera for the round which allowed Tucker and Blake the chance to secure treasured photos of their day.
But he also relayed stories about his dad, a prolific tour winner who died in 2015, and said that after his playing days were finished, he would proudly wear his green jacket to Augusta and position himself near the clubhouse, happy to talk to anyone who walked by.
“He just loved the community that that club is,” Tucker said.
“We only see it during the tournament, but for the week of the Masters, it is a wonderfully welcoming club. All the members will do you any favour you can dream of out on the course.”
The 11th hole, a 475m par 4 named White Dogwood, surprised Tucker, who said “it is a much better hole than you really would have seen on TV”.
If a player is fortunate to drive straight, Tucker said; “You do see the whole panorama of ‘Amen Corner’ in front of you. It is a patch of sacred ground for golfers and from that perch, midway down the 11th hole, you can see the whole of Amen Corner.”
Tucker got on a roll when parring 10 through 12 and had a 30 foot putt for birdie on the 13th, only to four putt.
Among the highlights was trying to mimic the famous shot Watson hit a day earlier in the playoff to clinch a remarkable win.
“The caddies show you where all the great shots were hit, from (Phil) Mickelson’s shot from the trees on the 13th to where Larry Mize chipped in on the 11th,” Tucker said.
“But it was the year Bubba Watson played his freak curveball shot from out of the trees on the 10th, on the playoff hole. A right-hander could never play that shot and it had to be a crazy, one in one-thousand curveball from a left-hander to do that, and you can’t imagine there being a better shot ever played at Augusta. It was just impossible to comprehend.”
Source Agencies
