AUGUSTA, Ga. – It’s the first and most essential fact of first-team golf: Nothing ever changes at the Masters.
Unless, of course, you’ve been lucky enough to set foot on the ground at Augusta National more than once. It’s about this time you realize it everything the changes at the Masters, all the time, from the huge structures, with white shutters that rise and fall without a whisper, to the shapes and pigments, the angles and contours of the golf course that has hosted the tournament every year for nine decades.
Yes, change is the way of the world – and especially so at Augusta National on Masters Monday, the same day the golf world arrives for the first time after 360 odd lonely days without it. And after a 4am wake up, 6am flight, 2.5 hour drive and a short makeover session in the parking lot, the difference is what I found in THIS Masters Monday, a surprisingly mild from Augusta National.
1. A new sign
The signs are an impressively important part of the Masters tradition – written in careful Masters letters and in a very specific tone. But during a walk along the golf course Monday afternoon, I spotted one I hadn’t seen in my five previous trips to Augusta, a sign that came with abundant foreboding.
Alcohol sales will end at 5:00 p.m
A Masters volunteer held up the sign on a placard near the first tee box, and I later discovered the message had spread throughout the grounds on Monday when a group of men made a beeline for the concession stand at Amen Corner.
“I hope it’s not 5!!”
2. Construction madness
It’s not hard to get an appreciation for the new Player Services Building — a new multimillion-dollar player performance center that appeared out of thin air sometime between last April and Monday morning. To the trained eye, the new building sticks out like a sore thumb, looming at the far end of the practice range as an all-encompassing reminder that Augusta National can — and often does. BEN — call out the new buildings that rise from the ground with impressive nonchalance.
Of course, to the normal eye, the building is NO a sore finger – away from him. It fits the Masters aesthetic as a white, griddle and black glove, and offers no shortage of pampering for golfers in the sport’s first major. In other words, it’s a worthy addition to a growing city of identical white buildings used to house golf’s biggest week. And hey, maybe members can get a nice workout out of it during the off-season.
3. Candy Crush
The biggest addition to the Masters this year isn’t a player or a pin spot — it’s a piece of candy. Masters by theme candy. And today I had the honor of trying the new Masters Candy Bar – a dark chocolate, caramel, fresh rice and hazelnut offering from Atlanta-based Bitzel’s Chocolate.
In short, it’s delicious. I’ll probably eat at least five of them before the week is out. Although I do wish it was sea salt on top of the candy instead of hazelnut, both for our tree allergy kings and queens and to add some savory flavor to balance out the sweetness of the candy.
4. A caddy cabaret
Late Monday afternoon at Amen Corner, the glorious green of holes 11-13 was replaced by a troupe of white robes — attire belonging to a half-dozen Augusta National corpses. The group was led by Scottie Scheffler supercaddie Ted Scott, who spent a long time on each green recording the undulations on the green. (This, I think, is the kind of unannounced job that earns your partner four green jackets.)
It was funny to see the rest of the bogeys (including loopers for Jason Day and Min Woo Lee) chasing Scott’s lead on the 12th green. Together, they walked a carefully calculated tango around the putting surface as they each gathered intelligence for the week, writing distances and other obscure bits of information in their garden books. Maybe this moment means nothing on Sunday afternoon, but nobody knows that on Monday afternoon – and they certainly wouldn’t prefer to spend Sunday evening wishing they’d been here a few minutes longer.
