The worst part about a national tee of Augusta

Has, it turns out, a worse part in relation to the lottery gain.

Moment – that bad part – only lasts a moment, but cuts you deeply.

Arrives far before paying. Before the flow of congratulatory texts and telephone calls. Before the first person requests a favor. Before you have thoroughly caught it yourself.

She arrived for me on the morning of April 12, 2024, fifteen seconds after Dad’s voice appeared on the speaker on my phone, and thirty seconds after I had received the most impossible news of my life.

“Yes?” Dad said, confused by my call in the middle of the masters week.

“I have some news,” I said.

“Yes ?? ” He said again, his eyes grow broad.

I remembered him Master of the media lotteryA tradition that gives a small number of writers the opportunity to play Augusta National Morning after the masters finish each year. I told him how I would enter each of the last four years, including this, but I would always be unsuccessful. And then I threw haymaker.

“Dad,” I said. “I won.”

“F – you,” he said in a moment of pure surprise.

And then he would start crying.

only then Did it hit me: the worst part of the lottery profit.

The wildest gift of my life would be mine alone.

Like most lottery winnersMy journey to Magnolia Lane was a long shot.

For a family island proud of its working class roots, the masters was a dream in the literal sense: flying, glorious and in an essential unrealistic way. We do not have possession tools to see the tour through any other lens except a camera CBSAnd that was okay. The distance only amplified our lust.

The first way of thinking — but will not touch, got an obstacle when I was accepted, against very long disputes, in a prestigious journalism In the spring of 2015. It was the possibility of a life – a golden ticket in a career as a sports writer, perhaps even with the possibility of covering a master in the flesh. But there was a problem: I couldn’t afford it. Only schooling would put tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

A few days before the deadline, I received a call. My grandfather wanted to see me. Can I come for dinner?

Joe Boyle – or “Poppy”, as I knew – was one of my best friends, immediately meaningless and irreverent and excellent and generous. His nickname came from the garbagemen that he would donate his car, and the evidence of his inherent kindness included paying and installing a whole new roof in a house he would sell the day before. (Poppy, a contractor and carpenter of the city of New York by trade, was fired by only one job: as a volunteer in Habitat for humanityafter he found their substanthel construction practices and made a bad smell.)

Golf was Poppy’s last love, a hobby of late life that dealt with a complete obsession. At the time I expelled to see him, the cancer had ended his game days, but he still devoured every word written about the game in his favorite newspaper, New York Post.

When I arrived, he cut straight to the point.

“After graduating in that program, you can really do this,” he said, spreading a master’s story from writer Mark Cannizzaro through the table. “I’m serious.”

I moved unpleasantly to my place. I wasn’t sure if I was receiving the offer, I said.

“What do you mean?”

“What if I am not still good enough?”

He stopped for a second, looking deep into my eyes. Then he delivered the line that changed my life.

“James, sometimes in life you have to get the gambling,” he said. “For now is one of those times.”

This was the end of the conversation, and though none of us knew it, it was the end of OUR CONVERSATION

Poppy died a few weeks later, materially poor, but rich in all the ways that matter. His funeral was a single issue in the standing room.

As we arrived at the church for the service, my grandmother approached me.

“Poppy wanted me to give you this,” she said with a rage. “Consider it your legacy.”

She reached a plastic bag and got a small, circular object: an old, red and white poker chip from one of the Atlantic city casinos.

My voice grabbed me in my throat.

I put the poker chip in the pocket of my costume and kept it tightly. A few minutes later, I stood in front of a filled home and handed over the eulogy of Poppy.

I finished the speech with a line that Poppy shared with me months ago, seconds after the last round of his life. It was a quote from the famous golf player Ben Hogan.

“As you walk through the ways of life, you have to smell the roses because you only get one round.”

“It wasn’t Augusta,” I said. “But congratulates Poppy, in a well -played round.”

Is not What You think as you go through the pearl gates in the golf paradise but WHO.

As you stroll down Magnolia Lane with your windows down and your leg from the accelerator, you are hit by the overwhelming feeling you are looking at. Not (necessarily) by snipers employed in the club or high -tech cameras, but with the same initial force that chooses a master champion every April long before it realizes it itself. Golf gods, maybe. Or maybe someone else.

Some make the car down Magnolia Lane filled with visions of golf greatness, some with the club’s dreams. But I bet that at least some find themselves thinking, as I did, for the people who gave everything for the moment and got nothing in return.

A time tee in Augusta National is the journey of a life. Sometimes, it’s the journey of some time of life. Your village cannot prove that you play in the flesh, but as far as I know, there are no rules against looking at the soul.

“We’ve put you in the champions closet room this morning,” the doctor said at the end of Magnolia Lane, interrupting my dream. “If my memory serves me, I think we’ve given you a good one.”

A minute later, I would do it up in the most sacred closet room in Golf, where I found the first rehearsals of my visitors with soul. In the back corner of the room, I noticed a tile with my name – James Colgan – Under a plaque with someone else.

Ben Hogan, 1951 – 1953.

After a few minutes ogling, I reset my jaw and traveled from Hogan’s closet to 1st box in Augusta National. As I walk, I wondered how many people in golf history could say they would do the same.

I couldn’t feel my control as I hit my first ball, but I was relieved when I saw it flying up and straight, bending perfectly over the tree on the right side of the road. As I left the Tee box New York Post Writer I would learn to get to know well. His name was Mark Cannizzaro.

As we approached the green, Mark watched as I reached his pocket and carefully got a ball sign.

“Beautiful poker chip,” he said, looking down the red and white part of the clay that I would place on the placement surface.

“Thank you,” I said. Unable to crush a smile. “It was my legacy.”

Mark did not notice our gallery in the clouds that day in Augusta, but I knew our gallery noticed it. That was always the case: we both wrote and read Poppy.

As usual, we provided a lot of fun. I stopped some nerve shakes to join the first nine impressive, though my placement performance seemed to be giving my ulcer caddy. I went back to nine backs ready to challenge a score in the lower 80’s years, which actually looked like an opportunity until I reached the 13th hole.

I would allow myself a quiet celebration moment as I watched a bird blow to 13: somehow, I would have managed to Avoid RAE’s Creek About Amen Corner. Then, I hit my hit toward Sunday flag affected only a HAIR Very strong, seeing as the ball melted beyond the hole, outside the green and in the water. I was laughing so much, I almost forgot on double cards.

Thankfully, IM not so big produced at least one view. It reached the right side of the 15th road as I looked at a second terrible stroke on the water. I argued by stretching until the end of the hill, as I would have seen countless players do it all week, but then something came to me. I grabbed my hybrid.

“Get the gambling, “ I thought quite loudly that I heard myself whispering.

And so I did, swinging as difficult and as well as any shot I hit all year round. When I did Birdie Putt a few minutes later, my first and only in Augusta National, I released a obedient laugh.

This was Poppy’s favorite hole.

I spent twelve months Trying to understand how my life led to Augusta National on the morning of April 15, 2024.

I have argued for metaphysics, questioned the existence of a higher power and consulted with the golf gods. Everyone gave a convincing opportunity to the unknown, but no one felt good. (Although I remain intrigued by the phenomenon of ‘quantum tunneling’, where particles go through major obstacles despite lacking classic energy to do so.)

Then one day hit me. The road from a childhood dream on the roads of golf paradise was not a solo trip. It had never been. Arrival was not in a great deal of time, a golf course or a heavenly place, but in all the moments that came before it. It was my gift in the literal sense, but it belonged to a group much larger than me.

It was those people who won this moment – those who gave everything, asked for nothing and believed it when they said I could do nothing. Their story is my story. My time of tee their.

The road to Augusta National does not start at the gates to Magnolia Lane, with a ticket to the masters, or in a class. It begins with a dream that becomes a promise: to get the big swinging, push the chips into the center of the table and go everything.

I didn’t know when I arrived at Augusta National, but of course I do now.

I won the lottery, and the golf has nothing to do with it.

You can reach the author in James.colgan@golf.com.

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