Georgia on the mind, but alas, I’ll be missing this Masters

The haunting melody and lyrics of Ray Charles hit me like a 3 iron. Georgia on his mind and this opening week of April also on mine. As usual.

The Master’s is almost here, but for the first time in decades, I am not there (sigh). 

I had covered all but two of the previous 58 tournaments at Augusta National—those two during the COVID years of 2020 and 2021—that makes 58 in all since my first in 1967. If you remember that year, Gay Brewer won.

The streak is over. Time, tide, and vision difficulties, not to mention the high price of nearby rooms, have caught up with me. 

As you may know I no longer drive, travel is difficult—the only reason I can get out of the house and onto a plane is because of my wife, Liz. I understand now what the great Ben Hogan meant when he said, “don’t get old.”

I missed that advice. And now I am missing my favorite golf tournament of any year. 

Yes, the Masters is not perfect, but it comes as close to perfection as anything in golf, anything in sports. A bit of pretension perhaps, the spectators are listed only as “patrons” and those patrons are not allowed to run on the grounds. Nor are cell phones allowed. An inconvenience, perhaps, in this modern society of instant communication, but if Rory McIlroy can do without his phone, so can the rest of us. 

This is the 90th Masters—it would have been my 59th—and the event history is full of names like Bobby Jones, who helped create the tournament; Gene Sarazen, whose double eagle (an albatross, if you will) in 1935 grabbed the nation’s attention; Jack Nicklaus, and, of course, Tiger Woods.

Timing is important. After a cold winter, the Masters is not only a sign of Spring, but the first huge sporting competition after the Super Bowl.

It’s also a verification that summer is on its way and people that are trapped in snow and ice in the northeast have reason to think of the future. That is both encouraging and enticing.

We’re told the Masters, which began with another name, became popular because baseball writers en route from Spring Training in Florida, stopped in Augusta on their way home.

That sports columnist, Grantland Rice, whose “Four Horseman” lead on the 1924 Army-Notre Dame Game became infamous, was an Augusta member, also contributed to the tournament’s growth.

Although certainly no one thinks of blue grey skies during April.

That the Masters is the championship of nothing, unlike the other three majors, the US Open, British Open, and PGA Championship, is insignificant. 

It has earned its special place in both our thoughts and the headlines. The cliché is the Masters doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday afternoon, and certainly there always seems to be drama in those final holes. As it did last year when McIlroy finally broke through to win. 

Can’t wait to see what will happen this time—although I’ll be in front of a TV set not in the press row at Augusta National. Darn.