My father loved
the Masters. A specialist when it came to spectator sports, Dad was rather
selective in tuning in for championships, be it the World Series, the Final
Four, or the Super Bowl. But he loved the Masters. One weekend every April, it
was the only news that mattered. Which is why this year’s event — the opening
round Thursday — will be so difficult for this casual golf fan.
How do I best
describe my dad’s taste for sports? It’s a reach, but “extreme traditionalist”
might work. To call him old-fashioned would be cliché, and would oversimplify
what were often profound observations of the games and athletes we cheer. To my
dad, there was always a right way to play and a wrong way, regardless of the
relative talents of a particular athlete. The most breathtaking of football
players could diminish his star quality with an end-zone gyration. (Words of
wisdom Dad took from my grandfather: “Never make fun of another man.”)
As long and hard
as I tried to explain to Dad that the carrying violation was simply no longer
called in basketball, he still grimaced every time he saw Allen Iverson in
uniform. And wild cards in baseball? A second-place world champion? I once
responded to his demand that this effrontery be stopped by telling him it would
be like putting toothpaste back in the tube. Dad didn’t even get the metaphor.
But he got the
Masters. Augusta National was a place where rules were drawn as much by history
as by any commission or governing board. The Masters was a tournament created by
the legendary Bobby Jones, then made the possession of the legendary Jack
Nicklaus, a six-time winner. Nicklaus was second only to Stan Musial in my
father’s pantheon of athletic greats, and this had as much to do with the way
the Golden Bear conducted himself as it did with his supreme skill with a golf
club.
Azaleas. Amen
corner. A green jacket to the winner, for Pete’s sake. The traditions at the
Masters are as quaint as they are offensive to the eye of fashion. (Dad was
compulsively tight-lipped during the recent controversy over female membership
at Augusta National. When the club’s chairman, Hootie Johnson, answered the
criticism of media sponsors by putting on his tournament without them — no
commercials! — Dad found it endearingly stubborn and quintessentially Southern.
Right or wrong, it was another tradition, you might say. There are larger
battles for mankind to win, my dad felt, than equal membership among sexes in a
golf club, no matter the prestige.)
With the help of
an old friend from Emory University (where he earned his Ph.D.), Dad got a
ticket to the 1996 Masters. In his 55th year, my dad walked the most famous golf
course in America, and witnessed history on two counts. This was the year of
Greg Norman’s epic Sunday collapse, when the Shark lost the green jacket more
than Nick Faldo won it. (Other than a win here in Memphis a year later, we’ve
barely heard from Norman since.) This was also the last Masters B.T. (Before
Tiger). One could argue that my dad saw in person the last Masters played where
the tournament favorite was in question.
Dad didn’t live to
see what will be the 10th anniversary of his walk at Augusta National. Which is
why I’ll be watching especially closely when this year’s field attempts to keep
the magnificent Woods from his fifth green jacket. The marketers at CBS call the
Masters “a tradition unlike any other.” Perhaps the only such slogan my dad ever
acknowledged as truth. Yes, my eyes will be on Augusta this weekend, my heart —
as always — with my dad.