Georgia on my mind. Why I love the Masters.
Spring and Augusta National. Made for each other.
I’m a bit of a golf nut. Playing it or watching it, I can’t get enough. Work and family tend to get in the way but kids’ll grow up and I’ll retire. Eventually.
I’ve always loved watching the game. The Masters especially. As a kid, whenever it was televised on the BBC, I’d watch it with Dad and he’d let me turn the sound up loud so you could hear the birdsong and the wind rustling the trees. I loved that. Coupled with the syrupy commentary of Peter Alliss, The Masters is a particularly vivid childhood memory.
So as Spring time rolls around again, I find myself excited at the prospect.
I suppose I should get around to writing a bucket list at some point. And when I do, joining the patrons at the Augusta National Golf Club for an edition of golf’s greatest tournament will be writ large right at the top of that list.
Until that time, TV coverage will have to do and I shall lose myself in it for four days. The vivid colours, the familiar fairways, hazards and greens. Sad news though that the famous old Eisenhower Tree on the 17th fairway is now gone, victim of winter storms, but the rest of Augusta’s majesty and treacherousness remains the same as always.
The course manicuring, which is always of the very highest order, presents the auld game in its most beautiful iteration and, for me, one of the highlights of the sporting calendar in this or any year.
It’s a unique combination of things that make the Masters so special.
The fact that it’s the only major tournament to be played at the same venue every year for one. The familiarity of the challenges and seeing how the current crop of talent will cope with them, is always intriguing.
It’s said that the tournament doesn’t truly start until the back nine on Sunday, and that’s the bit I love the most. There’s something so magical about curling up on the sofa in the dead of night and letting this glorious symphony of natural beauty, vivid colour and sporting theatre flood into your home.
It’s never an anti-climax and I’m sure this year will be no different. With PGA Tour and European Tour winners coming from anywhere and everywhere plus a new record of 24 first timers at this year’s staging of the event, it really is anybody’s tournament.
The Brit pack will fall short again, though, I feel. I fancy Rose and McIlroy to be top 10 but my money’s on Jordan Spieth to win his first major at the weekend. He’ll be the youngest ever champion if he does it, but he looks a class act with an old head on young shoulders.
Time to let it all wash over me. Georgia on my mind.
Main image: Lord Is Good via photopin cc
