While many of us are reveling in the start of Masters Week some are saying their goodbyes to Augusta National.
Ron Green Jr. of Global Golf Post Tweeted out a link to his father’s goodbye to The Masters and Augusta.
The senior Green was a long time sportswriter for the Charlotte Observer and honored with many awards over his long career.
He first covered The Masters in 1955 and for the first time since then he’ll be staying home. I imagine that all his Masters memories could fill quite a few volumes but he gives us a heartfelt retrospective of some of his most vivid memories.
Ben Hogan limping up the last fairway, gray cardigan sweater, white shirt buttoned, snap bill cap, gray slacks, wearing a face suitable for a funeral. He could have shot 90, I would have still been watching and waiting to hear his sparse comments afterward. No golfer has ever fascinated me the way Hogan did.
My first column from the Masters, in 1955, was about him.
Hogan, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, those were the stars of my early years there. Nelson was staying in the same hotel I was. One Sunday, when my roommate was running late, I bummed a ride to the course with Nelson and his wife. Pretty good way to arrive. Byron Nelson as chauffeur.
In the period following the Hogan-Snead-Nelson era, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player ruled. Among them, they won eight Masters and had five seconds in a nine-year span. I think that was the best era golf has ever enjoyed.
An annual treat was sitting in the locker room on Sunday morning, when the contenders came in to get ready for the showdown. You automatically noticed what they were wearing. Would that go well with a green jacket?
Nicklaus and Palmer played a practice round with the new kid Tiger Woods. They concluded that he would win more Masters than they would win between them, 10.
I doubted it but then the next year, the 21-year-old shot 70-66-65-69, a stroke better than anyone ever had – Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, anyone – to become the first black player to win a major, and the world turned its eyes to golf.
You can no more ignore Tiger than you can ignore a car wreck or a rainbow. As his dad would say, he is armed with thunder, clad with wings. I count Tiger, Nicklaus and Hogan as the best we’ve ever seen.
Dignity is draped all over the premises like wisteria. I’ve heard many people talk about their experiences there as if they had gone to heaven. I know what they mean.
Augusta National Golf Club is a lovely place but a day of hiking its hills will send you away aching for a tub and a martini. Over the years, I walked my 1,000 miles or whatever it was but I also hung out under a huge old tree on the clubhouse lawn. You could hear yesterday from there. Gene Sarazen was out there, along with a few more monuments who had known glory and now passed the days as living decorations.
Charlotte Observer Editor’s note: Ron Green, 86, is a retired Observer columnist. For decades, he covered the Final Four college basketball tournament, flew home to Charlotte and then drove to Augusta to write about the Masters. It was a special week for him, and his readers. He still writes for the Observer occasionally.
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