Masters Golf and the Argument for Keeping Some Things as They Are

A highly satisfying weekend of watching televised sports got me thinking about the value of tradition.

Entrance to the Augusta National Golf Course (provided photo)

CEDAR MOUNTAIN — Dogwoods and redbuds, dwarf irises and violets. Flawless blue sky and a cool morning warming to shirtsleeve weather by noon.

Sunday was one of those spring days that practically demand that you head outside, breathe fresh air and soak in all the reminders that, despite everything, the world isn’t ruined yet.

So, what did I do? Parked myself on the couch to watch TV, prisoner to an unfortunate fact of the annual sports schedule: the year’s most spectacular season corresponds with three of its most magnificent competitions.

The Paris-Roubaix bike race and the final round of the Masters golf tournament always fall on the same Sunday in April, followed the next day or the next week by the Boston Marathon, which during my working years I considered a solid excuse to play virtual hooky.

Editor: “What are you working on, Dan?”

Me, hastily closing the Boston Athletic Association’s live-update tab: “Probably a deep dive into that new zoning amendment.”

My love of cycling and running races are easy enough to explain. I like doing these things. But golf? Never enjoyed playing, never showed any aptitude, never cared for its aura of exclusivity, which the Masters pretty much epitomizes.

But what the tournament shares with those two races is an awareness that some things are better if they’re left alone. As anyone who has watched even a moment of Masters coverage knows, “tradition” is one way to describe this. Another is preservation.

Which seems to be getting a bad rap these days.

Among liberals, a new consensus is building that regulations imposed since the 1970s to protect neighborhoods and nature have stymied growth, halted publicly beneficial infrastructure projects and driven up the cost of housing. (Yep, but environmental laws are also the reason our rivers no longer burn.)

Self-described “conservatives,” meanwhile, don’t seem to want to conserve much of anything and are busily “disrupting” every government and academic institution in sight.

Sure, things need shaking up sometimes, but the best sporting events show the value of making change with care and respect. Completely blowing up rules and customs spoils the fun, while lore and legacy allow drama to build year by year.

I was an avid fan of Ohio State football for so long, I can tell you the exact score of the crushing loss to Michigan back in 1969, yet I only vaguely recall this year’s national championship, which was basically bought with the largest NIL payroll in the sport.

At the Masters, Paris-Roubaix and Boston, on the other hand, conditions are pretty much constant and the challenges eternal.

I watch to see which runners will fall into the venerable trap of surging at the halfway point, carried away by cheers from the rabid throng of Wellesley College students. I wonder who will fade a few miles later at Heartbreak Hill, where dreams of olive wreaths have been dying for 128 years.

Paris-Roubaix is the same age as Boston and three years older than the Tour de France, and the priority is packing that event’s three weeks of brutality into one very long afternoon.

The 161-mile route takes riders to the Belgian border through lovingly curated French countryside and over bike- and bone-rattling sections of cobbles, some of which date back to the rule of Napoleon.

The Masters is the sport’s only major tournament played every year on the same course — a course that boasts of landmarks, such as Amen Corner, known even to non-fans, and of historic moments like Tiger Woods’ coming-out party as a 21-year-old and the putt that sealed Jack Nicklaus’ last win at age 46.

I tuned into Paris-Roubaix at 10 am sharp to a broadcast that promised an extra dose of history.

One of the favorites, Tadej Pogacar, is a throwback to the era of Eddy Merckx, a hill-climbing, multi-year champion of the Tour de France willing to mix it up with the brutes who typically dominate the flatter one-day classics.

Alas, it didn’t work out because of one of the downsides of the organizer’s intractable ways — crashes. Pogacar led with about 25 miles left to go when, as bike announcers like to say, he “overcooked a corner.” No injuries, but by the time he untangled himself from his machine, his main competitor had opened up a gap that Pogacar couldn’t hope to close.

I watched to the end, nevertheless, to soak in the understated pageantry, and then went out on a bike ride just long enough to justify a few more hours on the couch.

Some years after similar exertions, soothed by gentle commentary and the dreamy, big-screen images of azaleas and carpet-like fairways, I do as much napping as watching.

This year, if I hadn’t been so committed to remaining supine, I would have been on the edge of my seat.

Not only did the final round offer the prospect of high drama, but drama steeped in the themes of this column.

Bryson DeChambeau is a star of the insurgent, Saudi-backed LIV Golf, synonymous with vast sums of guaranteed money and dull and meaningless tournaments. He was matched in the final pairing with Rory McIlroy, who took a ton of heat a few years ago as the leading defender of the established PGA Tour.

Which, mind you, is hardly the sort of organization I would normally root for. One famous columnist perfectly described the two tours’ dispute as “billionaires fighting billionaires,” and the only reason to side with the PGA is that it stages real competitions with real legacies.

Likewise, the Augusta National Golf Club is really only admirable because it puts on a great show.

The club’s much-vaunted traditions include misogyny and Jim Crow segregation. The natural beauty of Augusta is a product of “extreme artifice,” according to a 2019 takedown of the event in the New Yorker, and for 51 weeks of the year, serves as “an oligarch’s playground,” more like Davos than Fenway Park.

These are folks who can afford to sell pimento cheese sandwiches for $1.50.

But talk about great TV!

All the better Sunday because of McIlroy’s very human vulnerability, by which I mean he’s golf’s ultimate choke artist.

He distanced himself from DeChambeau pretty early and without too much trouble, but then started sabotaging himself on nearly every hole, starting with the 13th, when he inexplicably dumped a routine wedge shot into the Heartbreak Hill of Augusta, Rae’s Creek.

He hit towering, impossibly accurate iron shots that Bobby Jones could have only dreamed about. (So, yes, something to be said for modern equipment and fitness regimens.) These were followed by missed putts so agonizing that my groans brought my alarmed wife rushing into the room to make sure I hadn’t suffered a grievous injury.

When McIlroy finally won, in a playoff, his tears of joy and relief certainly seemed genuine. So if it gets tiresome to hear about the tournament as historic and the course as “hallowed” (Please, it ain’t Gettysburg.) it all, obviously, means something.

The Masters is special not only because of the top-flight competition and the course’s beauty but because they’ve been that way for a long time. And I’d say that generally, established institutions become established and norms become norms because they have something valuable to offer — something more valuable, in the examples I’m thinking about, than entertaining competition.

So, if the organizers of the Masters don’t need to hear this, plenty of other people do: Please don’t make a bunch of heedless changes. Please don’t mess everything up.

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