Quiet please, it’s the Masters

Posted Mar 27, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Mar 27, 2010 at 10:45 PM

It is tee time at Augusta. 

The bells are toiling at The Cathedral of golf for the faithful to come and pay annual homage to what surely is the most majestic, revered and respected tournament in the world of golf. 

The Masters is the absolute pinnacle of golf, most of us agree, in an unmatched splendor of this sport, in an Eden of this sport. 

There is nothing like it.  You walk out of the clubhouse to see the expanse of that grandeur and you never cease to be amazed.  When Bobby Jones built the course, he built it to be the cathedral it has become. I would imagine most of us who have worked this tournament think it is perfectly situated for what it has become, I believe, the epitome of this sport.

The course, the layout, the grass, the greenery, the difficulty, the streams, the dangers, and the rewards unmatched.

I reported sports most of my life and the first major event I was able to cover was the Masters in 1958. 

What a way to start big time sports reporting. 

I was with the St. Petersburg Times when Bill Beck, Sports Editor, told me to go cover it.

The reason: Arnold Palmer that spring had won the St. Petersburg Open at Pasadena and I had followed him the entire four rounds and walked with his wife, Winnie, all four rounds.  I covered my first Masters because I said I could get there for nothing, riding up with St. Pete golf writer (for whom I ghost wrote) Bill Cody, who couldn’t write but had connections and a lot of money.  I stayed in the old Bon Air Hotel, which was the Master’s Headquarters. I slept on the floor of the room of Ted LeCompte, a golf teacher, at the Bon Air, and ate on either LeCompte or Cody or free sandwiches the Masters supplied at the course.  The Times gave me a $5 a day per diem.  The Bon Air was the classiest hotel in the city at the time, although the floors were as hard as the rest of the hotels.

I didn’t care, I was breaking through to the bigger times.  I was covering the Masters and assumed everybody in the Times circulation was reading the story I was writing.

On that first coverage time, I discovered how to cover a major golf tournament, where to go and be at the right time and always to be where the action was, and in this case was with Palmer or young Jack Nicklaus, a young upstart player, or the wonderful Ben Hogan and Sam Snead.  The Times surely liked what I did for them since I became their golf person, along with Cody and got to know Palmer and wife Winnie well, when he won his first Masters that year. He hasn’t forgotten it and I haven’t either.

I covered every Masters from Palmer’s first win to the entrance of the golf scene of the now embattled Tiger Woods.  He knows he has some making up to do for his off the course adventures and he has said so, which he will have to say over and over and over again. Tiger still has cat callers out there who will let him know he is not off the hook yet in Augusta. 

They won’t taunt him long, but they will remind him of his missteps and he is not what most of his fans thought he was, a fine golfer, a fine individual.  We know that at The Cathedral the hoots won’t be prolonged but he will be reminded of those adventures off the course.  I suppose most of us thought he was beyond such activities.  The fans are forgiving but he is reminded it will take good play to erase bad play.

Of all these players at Augusta through the years, I think I spent more good times with the irrepressible Tommy Bolt, fiery always, and a good close friend through the years of Anne and Lloyd Ferentino, who made him their professional at Tarpon Woods and Jim Colbert, who spent many years with Tom Dempsey at Saddlebrook, Bill Saxon and Jim Garner, friends of Ed Rood, Senior, and Charles Coody.  We walked Augusta with the Coodies many times, and the late Leon Denton of Lake Wales, who always had an open door on his motel room with food and drink inside for anyone who might want to drop in.  Leon may well have been the originator of the open door policy.  However, Leon always kept my wife Linda and I in trouble by parking in no parking zones or other misdeamors in the strict Augusta.  Once, as we were entering the course, the golf coach at the University of Florida, stopped me and asked if I could get him in.  I went in, saw Bob Murphy, a Florida player, he gave me his badge and I took it to the Gator coach, so he could get in to see his players. 

I can tell you this, of all those players in Augusta, none, aside from Palmer and Nicklaus and Jones, gave me more stories than Lee Trevino, who was always ill at ease in the upper crust of the Masters.  In fact, he refused to go into the clubhouse proper, changed his clothes and shoes in the parking lot with me looking, in protest. He was a little out of line, but he was fun.

If you ever get a chance to go to Augusta to see the Masters, go, the clubhouse is indeed The Cathedral of golf and the course its Eden.