Oh, how wonderful it is that the Masters is now underway!
Not just underway, but underway in its accustomed springtime schedule, the time of year when the breathtaking Augusta National golf course is at its finest. The time of year, too, when the golf season’s natural flow perfectly reaches full flood force.
The coronavirus can no longer restrain it, nor can ignorant cries for the major tournament to be moved outside the state of Georgia — as if the Masters would be the Masters anywhere but Augusta National. That last suggestion is as, well, moronic as it would be to say that the Empire State Building should be moved to Natchez, Mississippi, or that the Tour de France be held in China.
Without overdoing the cliche of springtime symbolizing rebirth, one still can’t help but feel the rush of joy that COVID-19 is fading and big events returning just as Augusta’s azaleas bloom. To walk those grounds (as I have twice and wish I were doing today) is to experience an almost mystical understanding of how a particular place can find its purpose.
The great news this year is that the actual competition at the tournament is set up to be even more worthy than the gauzy sentiments. What golf fans want leading into the Masters is for all the top players to enter the championship in top form. This year, with one exception, they are.
Based on career accomplishments and spot in their career primes (broadly speaking), six players can be said to be vying for the current status as “best in the world.” Of those six, five — Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas, and Jordan Spieth — have won tournaments since New Year’s (Johnson in a star-studded field in Saudi Arabia, the rest in the United States). Only Rory McIlroy has been off form this spring.
To those five, add two more just one step behind them in status who also have won this year, the controversial Patrick Reed and rising star (and current PGA champion) Collin Morikawa, along with solid play from a host of next-level stars, and the scene is set for plenty of drama from today’s best players.
Oh, and Phil “the Thrill” Mickelson, now 50, is there, too, with a poor record this year so far but a sneaky-good 69 in his most recent competitive round last week, as if he has “found something” just in time for Augusta.
As the tournament began with the traditional ceremonial first shots by legends Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player — joined on the tee this time by the always-classy Lee Elder, who in 1975 was the first black player ever to compete in the Masters — the welcome return to beautiful normal, after a year of plague, seemed like an answered prayer. In that light, when the leaders reach the course’s famous “Amen Corner” in Sunday’s final round, that appellation will have an especially appropriate and poignant second meaning.
