The most forbidden article of masters is also his secret to the world’s predominance

Augusta, GA – Yeardo year, sports world travels to Augusta National for a weekly exercise in quantum.

Like Schrodinger’s cat, masters exist in two opposing states at the same time: immediately fixed with tradition and races at the forefront of technological progress. What is old is new… and both old AND New.

The most unusual golf dance begins on the hips (or perhaps more accurately, pockets). This week, Augusta National will refuse to allow any of its 150,000-tie patrons to bring their mobile phones to the property-keeping a long tradition that prohibits technology in the Golf Course (included for membership). At the same time, the club will begin its largest and broader content it sometimes offers, including a cellular application feature that allows anyone to look at each week of the tournament in ultra -high definition.

If you are a golf fan of a certain age, you may have already seen the newest limit of masters content: Tiktok. The algorithm has suffered a master Green Blitzkrieg over the past few days, with some prominent influencers – Much less or no link to golf – sharing personalized gift bags, clothing selection and master goods.

Of course, these efforts reflect Augusta National’s diligent commitment to Golf’s evangelism, bringing the mystics and atmosphere of the first major golf mass. But for those who witness the contents in the flesh, it creates a funny dichotomy: for the only place in the world where you cannot see what is happening in the 16th hole in Augusta National this week is … staying in any of the remaining 17 holes.

“The way I look at what we are using technology to tell the story of who we are, to tell the story of the masters, to explain to people – especially young people – what masters are about and why it matters for golf game,” Fred Ridley club leader said on Wednesday. “I don’t see them at all as in opposition.”

In his eight years as chairman of the tournament, Ridley has run Augusta National march towards global predominance with a simple credo: More is more. In an increasingly defined sport by a relationship with zero amounts to the outside world, Ridley has celebrated masters with a group of First grade technology advances and access expansions that do not serve any visible last line. This week, golf fans will not only watch every tour of the tour, they will see every hit hit on it compose.

The result of those efforts? Augusta National has overwhelmed her position in the Golf world, raising herself beyond the image of a strong club with an exclusionary story in perhaps the most influential Sports Ambassador. When Ridley announced that the club will “continue” to support a return of the Golf ball on Wednesday, he confirmed that he would continue in Pro Golf. When he announced that the club would continue to invite the qualified Liv players in 2022, the rest of the diplomas attended. The masters logo is no longer just a logo, as anyone who has violated the legs inside the club The center of behemoth goods I can tell you – has come to represent something much bigger.

“I think all It’s better than it was 50 years ago, “Ridley said Wednesday.” But the fundamental values ​​of the club, the notion of respecting tradition and continuing to move forward and improve and innovate while still respecting tradition? This is really what guides us every day. “

Ridley is the physical manifestation of club coercion. He has opened the floods in the efforts of masters’ content and presented the first competition of the club’s women, the national Augusta women’s amateur, but has kept a check of some long club rules. Phones are still banned, Pimento cheese sandwiches are still $ 1.50, and angel It is still in the field of tour as a past champion, despite a sentence of domestic violence.

However, the signs of progress are obvious. Ridley said he could talk about “30 or 40 minutes” about the various charitable efforts of the club and admitted that the club had set up a “veil of secrecy” around his philanthropy. Fifty years ago on Thursday – and 28 years after Jackie Robinson – Elder broke the drawing of the Masters. On Wednesday morning, Ridley did more than accepting that story; He hugged him.

“Jack Nicklaus would eventually continue to win his fifth green jacket that week, but until then, the story of another dimension was made when Lee hit his first shot as a competitor of masters,” Ridley said. “We will never forget his lasting heritage that made the golf a better game for everyone.”

It is interesting to testify to Augusta National – throughout her careful purpose – to deal with the opposite gravitational attractions of the past and the future. Beyond pearl gates really IS A place from an era previously, where the food is free, the distractions are scarce and the golf is excellent. Outside of the gates, the real world screams to the future with the speed of decay and maximum digital stimulation – and Augusta National Is thereAlso.

The determinant feature of the masters is having her leg in both of these buckets, even if she sometimes looks clumsy. It would be easier for Augusta National, for the masters, and for my hungry chiefs of communication-that the club would live somewhere closer to the middle, but would not be nowhere close to. In an essential way, the masters would not be masters.

On Wednesday morning, Ridley predetermined a long discussion of content and influencers and tiktok with a weather ratio.

“A colder than normal January has been favorable for an almost perfect flowering of Azalea spring and other flowering ornaments,” Ridley said. “One of our guests last week referred to the course as a beautiful painting, and I can’t agree more.”

It was such a statement welcomed in the 89th masters as 1. Somewhere, Schrodinger grinned.

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