The Majors 2015 E-Book

Iain Carter

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

With a foreword by Padraig HarringtonThe four majors are the most exciting and important events of the golfing calendar. The Masters, US Open, The Open and the PGA: these are the tournaments by which we measure players' careers.In a year of dramatic twists and turns, the majors of 2015 did not disappoint. Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth vied for grand slams and the top spot; Zach Johnson proved that golf isn't just a young man's game; and Jason Day, after so many close calls, finally triumphed in one of the most emotional victories ever witnessed. Finally, after more than a decade of Tiger Woods' domination, golf has entered the era of a new 'big three': Spieth, McIlroy and Day, promising an exciting rivalry at the top of the game that could last for years to come.Using first-hand insights alongside interviews with the players, Iain Carter provides a fascinating account of golf's most prestigious events, recapping the enthralling action of the year in which a new generation of young stars surged to the fore.

Leseprobe

THE MAJORS2015

In memory of Iain Thomas, an inspirational boss who sent me to my first Masters in 1993.

Contents

Foreword by Padraig Harrington

Introduction

1. The History of the Masters

2. In Search of the Slam

3. April at Augusta

4. US Open Breaks New Ground

5. Figuring Out Chambers Bay

6. US Open As It Happened

7. Golf’s Oldest Championship

8. Open Contenders

9. The Five-Day Major

10. Preparing for the PGA

11. The PGA’s Fitting Finale

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Index

Foreword

By Padraig Harrington

Majors are the tournaments that define our golfing careers. Every year they are my focal point and I set out my stall to try to make sure that these are the events where I’m ready to play my best golf.

Players have different ways of approaching them and we are all striving to find the magic formula. For me, I have always liked to play the week before a major to ensure that I am at my competitive best.

It is also important to play the right type of golf, which is the reason why in 2007 I competed in the Irish PGA on a links course the week before my Open Championship victory at Carnoustie, a formula that also worked the following year for The Open at Royal Birkdale.

My ambition was always to win multiple majors, rather than just one and when people describe me as a three-time major winner, I think to myself, ‘three for now’, as I hope to add to my tally before I retire.

The majors of 2015 made it an exciting year for golf. The emergence of Jordan Spieth and Jason Day is great for the future of the game while Zach Johnson proved that it’s not just a young man’s pursuit.

Iain Carter has been a fixture at every major since 2003 and his reporting and commentary are always insightful and accurate.

I hope you find the book’s subject matter as fascinating as I do.

Introduction

Rain was falling, it was chilly and, although it was July, it was not a day to be by the British seaside. Unless you were among the thousands of people gathered at one particular spot on a cold, damp Scottish east coast. This was St Andrews, the ‘Home of Golf’. Of course we wanted the sun to shine, we wanted a baked golf course and shirtsleeves to be the order of the day. But what can you do about the weather? As Tiger Woods likes to say of things he would rather not discuss, it is what it is. And it did not matter that we were wrapped in waterproofs and struggling for feeling in our chilled hands. All of us among those thousands of people were witnessing the climax of the most historic and important golf tournament in the world.

That’s what mattered.

They sat in grandstands, stood on the roadside, in shop fronts and hung out of windows. They wanted to see the destiny of the famous Claret Jug, the prize that goes to the winner of The Open Championship. The recipient is grandly known as the Champion Golfer of the Year – he is someone who has survived the elements and the demands of a unique golf course. Where else do they share greens between separate holes? Where else does the course start and finish in the heart of a historic town? Where else are there no bunkers on either the first or last hole? Where else would you rather be at the end of an Open Championship?

This is the tournament that set the template for a game that has become a multi-million-pound industry. It visits St Andrews every five years or so. The rest of the time it is staged at eight other courses located on various parts of the British coastline. There are four more Scottish venues: Muirfield, Carnoustie, Turnberry and Royal Troon. In England, Royal Lytham & St Annes, Royal Birkdale, Royal Liverpool and Royal St George’s take turns. And, in the not too distant future, Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland will be invited to return to the roster. These are places that have links courses of the highest calibre to test the world’s best players as well as the space to accommodate the vast infrastructure accompanying these events.

The Open Championship is special and, in the modern era, it features 156 of the world’s leading players. It is one of four tournaments that define careers. The other three are the Masters, US Open and PGA, all staged in the USA. The evolution of the sport has dictated that these events are regarded as ‘majors’. They are the tournaments players want to win more than any other. They’ve been playing The Open since Willie Park Senior won the inaugural tournament at Prestwick in 1860. Horace Rawlins was the first winner of the US Open at Newport Country Club in 1895 while the PGA Championship was first played as a matchplay event in 1916, with the America-based Scot Jim Barnes claiming the honours. The Masters is the youngest and most glamorous of the majors; Horton Smith was the inaugural winner in 1934.

The process of acquiring major status has evolved over time. No one can quite pinpoint the exact moment that these four tournaments separated themselves from the rest. In the early 20th century, the most prestigious tournaments were The Open, US Open, the Amateur Championship and US Amateur. When the great American Bobby Jones won all four in 1930 he was considered to have completed the ‘Grand Slam’ or, as it was also known then, ‘The Impregnable Quadrilateral’.

Jones set a new benchmark for the game and went on to play a key role in the establishment of the Masters. He never turned professional but, with the paid ranks taking precedence, the status of the majors evolved. It was no single person’s role to bequeath major status, more a consensus that built within the game and through the coverage by the reporting media.

They are the tournaments by which we measure players’ careers. Who is the best male golfer of all time? Jack Nicklaus. Why? Because he has won 18 majors, four more than anyone else. ‘Who in the world remembers who won the 1975 Westchester Classic or the 1978 Western Open?’ Nicklaus once said. ‘Basically, the majors are the only comparison over time, played on the same courses for generations. All the best players are always there.’

For many years it looked as though Nicklaus’s record would be surpassed by Tiger Woods. When the American won the 2008 US Open, his 14th major title, he was only 32 years old. He had played, arguably, the best golf the sport had ever seen in a nine-year spell during which he dominated like no other player before. He won the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach by 15 shots and that year’s Open at St Andrews by eight. But he is still waiting for a 15th major after a dramatic collapse in fitness and form.

Woods came into 2015 ready to play his last set of majors before turning 40, still clinging onto the hope that he will one day surpass Nicklaus’s tally. With each tournament that passes, however, the odds lengthen on his fulfilling a dream that once seemed inevitable.

A new generation of young stars emerged, largely inspired to take up the game by Woods’ performances. Rory McIlroy already had four majors to his name, needing only to win the Masters to complete the full set. Jordan Spieth was a mere 21 years old but had already signalled his readiness to break through at this level. And Jason Day had featured on enough leaderboards to suggest the same.

There is always a vast array of potential winners at any major. There are so many variables to be taken into account. Tennis, like golf, has four marquee tournaments known as grand slams. However, it is much easier to predict who will be fighting for the titles at Wimbledon, the US, Australian and French Opens because the champion only has to beat seven other players. The big prizes are shared among fewer tennis players, usually the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. In three of golf’s ‘big four’, however, the champion has to beat 155 opponents. The Masters has a smaller field but still there are more than 90 other competitors to be conquered.

This is why a grand slam of golf majors is such a rare occurrence. Aside from Bobby Jones’s heroics of 1930, Woods is the only other player to hold all four of the most important trophies simultaneously. After romping to those massive wins at Pebble Beach and St Andrews in 2000, he won the PGA and the following year’s Masters. No one has achieved this feat in the same calendar year.

In 2015 we spent several months contemplating the possibility of a historic slam. The possibility remained alive as we stood in the rain at St Andrews on an astonishing Monday evening. Oh yes, we all wanted to be there!

In my role as the BBC’s golf correspondent, I attended each of the majors; whispering into my microphone in April at the 79th Masters, in June at the 115th US Open, at the 144th Open in July and a month later at the 97th PGA Championship. Each tournament offered intriguing possibilities. Could McIlroy complete his set of slams at the Masters? How would a brand new US Open venue stand up to the test of hosting the world’s best players? Would the ‘Old Course’ at St Andrews provide another classic Open at the home of golf? And would we have a fitting finale to the major season at Whistling Straits?

By the time we arrived in Wisconsin for that concluding major, I was attending my 60th major as a reporter. It had already turned into the most compelling year of golf I could remember. The PGA did not disappoint either. It produced one of the most emotional victories ever witnessed.

I had embarked on a long and magical journey that took the golfing circus from the US Pacific Northwest, to Scotland’s east coast and the American Midwest. First, though, it was the annual trip to the Deep South. To Augusta, Georgia.

CHAPTER 1

The History of the Masters

There’s not much to do in Augusta, the day after the Masters. Every year there’s a mass exodus from a city that spent the previous week at the centre of the sporting world. Hotel rooms and rental properties are vacated as this otherwise unremarkable stop on Georgia’s Interstate 20 returns to normality.

‘The Masters is the only reason people know about Augusta,’ Scott Michaux, chief sports columnist for the Augusta Chronicle, admits. ‘It’s the second largest city in Georgia, but by a wide margin to Atlanta. Augusta’s identity is wrapped up in the golf tournament, otherwise it’s a normal American city. There’s nothing that particularly stands out. But there’s this golf course. People in the town are fiercely proud of what this tournament is and what it’s become.’

Once the Masters has been decided, and that rather desolate April Monday arrives, many of the fans, ‘patrons’ of the tournament for the previous few days, simply hang around. They idly fill time before heading back to Atlanta or Charlotte for their flights home. There is no chance of venturing back down Magnolia Lane to revisit the Augusta National Golf Club. Once the Masters is done, the gates to the general public are firmly closed.

Without much else to do, some will head to the city’s vast shopping mall. If, however, they go in search of Masters memorabilia they will be disappointed. The shirts, caps, umbrellas and sun cream that bear the tournament emblem can only be bought on the premises during the week of the event. Regulars know the score, buying huge quantities of golfing apparel while they can, as well as tee shirts, posters and teddy bears for friends and family. These gifts will be as close as most people get to the fabled tournament. The Augusta National fiercely protects its exclusivity, right down to its official merchandise.

The Augusta National Club wants its tournament to be special in every regard. It wants those with tickets to feel lucky that they are witnessing a unique event. No one, for instance, is allowed a mobile phone on the premises – violation of this rule leads to instant ejection. ‘They’re very strict, almost to the point that they are extreme,’ Michaux says. ‘But the nice thing is that it changes the tone and tenor of the event. You are there to pay attention to the people who are putting on the show. They don’t have electronic scoreboards, they don’t have video screens, they don’t have hospitality tents and all those things make it feel like you’ve gone back in time. It is so perfectly put together. They just don’t give a crap that you are going to be there without your cell phone all day. Who else does that? Not even Wimbledon.’

Anyone spotted running will be told to slow down and woe betide anyone with the temerity to walk barefoot or lie down on the immaculate turf. ‘Wake up and move along please,’ the offender will be told, politely yet firmly, by one of the Pinkerton Guards patrolling the course.

The message is clear. Make the most of your time at the Masters.

Wander around the Augusta Mall on the Monday after the Masters and there is very little to suggest that you are in the vicinity of golf’s most glamorous tournament. It takes a keen eye to detect any link at all. You will find one, though, if you visit the restrooms. Walk down the corridor leading to the ground-floor toilets and you may spot a picture of a familiar-looking building. It shows the old farmhouse at the Fruitland Nurseries, a white two-storey building with a vertical lookout popping up from the centre of a symmetrically angled roof. An outdoor staircase leads to an upstairs balcony. Those stairs no longer exist, but this slightly faded photograph unmistakably depicts the building that became the clubhouse at the Augusta National Golf Club.

Built in 1854, it was the home of Dennis Redmond. He created an indigo plantation in the surrounding grounds which yielded berries used to make the blue dye that coloured denim jeans (who would have thought that the origins of the game’s most exclusive club would be intertwined with the creation of clothing regarded as unacceptable in so many golfing establishments?).

Redmond soon sold up and the property was bought by a Belgian horticulturist called Prosper Berckmans. He turned the plantation into Fruitland Nurseries and grew a vast array of plants, including hundreds of different varieties of azaleas, dogwood, pears, apples and grapes. The drive that linked the house to the main Washington Road was bordered by an avenue of Magnolia trees. After his death in 1910, however, the business faltered, then failed.

Around this time golf was growing in popularity and it was clear the land would provide a perfect setting for a course. Miami businessman ‘Commodore’ J. Perry Stoltz planned to take advantage by building both a course and a $2-million hotel, aimed at winter visitors from the north keen to escape the snow and ice of New York and its surrounds. Augusta was becoming a tourist destination, with golf on its menu. ‘In those days Florida was a swamp so you didn’t go there,’ says Michaux. ‘People came as far as Augusta where they got the nice weather and they built nice hotels.’

Augusta residents were thrilled at the prospect of the flamboyant Stoltz investing in the area. He was already famous for his highly successful Fleetwood Hotel in Miami. Had Stoltz succeeded with his hotel project, though, the Augusta National and the Masters would never have come about. Nor would the traditional clubhouse still be standing. It was slated for demolition once the hotel had been built, and in 1925 work on the foundations of a new building began. Fate took a hand, however. Stoltz’s showcase hotel was flattened by the great Miami hurricane of September 1926, which ripped through the city and killed 300 people. Stoltz was left bankrupt and his hotel plans collapsed.

The site went back on the market and two friends with contrasting backgrounds but a shared dream came into the picture – Clifford Roberts, a financial broker of humble origins, and Robert Tyre Jones Jr, from Atlanta, Georgia.

Jones’s stage name was Bobby. To his friends, he was Bob. To fans, he was golfing royalty. He held the distinction of being the only man to simultaneously hold The Open and US Open titles along with the Amateur Championship and its American equivalent. That was in 1930 and, at the time, it constituted golf’s grand slam. A lawyer by trade, Jones never turned professional, although he was certainly good enough.

Roberts hailed from Iowa, born in 1894 on a farm owned by his mother’s parents. He was the second of five children and had a happy, itinerant childhood. His father, Charles, was often away pursuing small-time business opportunities. As Roberts said: ‘My father always was interested in seeing what was on the other side of the next hill.’ His mother, Rebecca, struggled with depression as she tried to raise the family amid haphazard finances. The young Clifford proved streetwise, entrepreneurial and hard-working. He had regular jobs from the age of 12 and left school early. He was also prone to getting in trouble, and not just the occasional fist fights. On his way to Sunday school in October 1910, the 16-year-old realised he had forgotten his gloves. He returned home, ignited a kerosene lamp and accidentally dropped the lighted match. The house burned down. Almost the only item that was saved was the family piano that his father Charles dragged from the smouldering ruins. Clifford’s life as an adult began there and then.

He promised his mother he would make up for his negligence. Aside from helping on the family’s failing farm, he took a variety of jobs assisting his father and working as a clerk in a dry goods firm. Within three years, though, Rebecca Roberts had committed suicide, firing a shotgun to her chest just three days after her 44th birthday. She wrote farewell letters to each member of the family. To Clifford, as David Owen quotes in his book The Making of the Masters, she wrote: ‘Dear Clifford, I write to beg you not to grieve but be a man in time of trial. Papa will need you. Be a sober upright son & all will be well. I know Ma [Rebecca’s mother] wants you to come to her. Love Mama.’

In the years that followed Roberts became a menswear salesman, travelling across the Midwest. The family moved to Kansas City and his father remarried. Roberts was earning just over a dollar a month plus commissions and was doing well enough to send funds home. Nevertheless these were hardly auspicious circumstances for someone who would eventually become the joint founder of golf’s most exclusive club.

Roberts felt he could make his fortune in New York and landed a job with the Oklahoma-Wyoming Oil Company in 1918. Almost immediately, he was called up for national service and became a private in the Signal Corps at Camp Hancock, in a place called Augusta in the state of Georgia. He had never been there before.

After serving in France, he was discharged in 1919. He threw himself back into business in New York and Chicago although he found neither city paved with greenbacks. He became the principal in Roberts and Co and started to make modest returns as a financial negotiator and stock and bond broker. He made $70,000 in 1929, by far his most successful year. His timing, though, proved disastrous. Roberts invested much of his money in securities. In October came the Wall Street Crash. It always seemed to be a case of one step forward, two steps back.

Roberts’ social life, however, was proving more fruitful. Keen to get in with a burgeoning and seemingly affluent golfing set, Roberts joined Knollwood Country Club in New York’s Westchester County. He attended an exhibition match featuring the game’s biggest luminary – Bobby Jones. ‘Each time I saw Bob or read his public comments, I respected and liked him more,’ Roberts wrote in his book about the Augusta National Club. ‘I watched part of the final of the 1926 USGA Amateur Championship at Baltusrol, in New Jersey, in which George Von Elm defeated Jones 2 and 1. Shortly afterwards, I was one of some half-dozen who were having a drink with the loser and trying to think of something comforting to say to him.’

Here lie the roots of the relationship that yielded the Masters.

A mutual friend ran the Bon Air-Vanderbilt hotel in Augusta and after his time in the army Roberts had occasionally returned for winter golf holidays. The train link from New York was good and the weather invariably fine. Jones, meanwhile, had often spoken of his desire to build a championship course in the South, away from Atlanta where he struggled to find privacy. Roberts was a self-confessed ‘hero-worshipper’ and no one fitted the bill for his affections better than Bobby Jones. His air of humility and charm added to the attraction. The shared dream of creating a leading golf course, and the prospect of working with such a preeminent sporting figure, was enticing.

The pair visited the site of the Fruitland Nurseries in 1931 and Roberts was immediately struck by the lines of magnolias on the avenue that led to the farmhouse. They could see the potential for a fine golf course, while a group of local businessmen recognised the opportunity presented by such a facility to draw visitors to the area. A leasehold company that included Roberts and Jones’s wealthy father, was set up to acquire 365 acres of land for $15,000, taking on around $60,000 of debt in the process. The company, Fruitland Manor Corporation, then leased around half of the land to the prospective new golf club, which was now actively seeking members.

Several names for the new club were mooted, with Georgia-National the front-runner. Eventually Augusta-National (with the hyphen later dropped) prevailed.

Roberts and Jones envisaged a membership of 1,800, paying an entrance fee of $350 and subscriptions of $60 a year. Those numbers were never achieved – today, the club has around 300 members. They planned two 18-hole courses, with the second layout to be added once the membership had passed 1,000. There would be tennis courts, outdoor squash courts, housing, a new clubhouse and, potentially, a hotel. The old Redmond farmhouse would be torn down because it would be too small to serve as a clubhouse.

Roberts set about attracting enough members to make the plan financially viable. But the economic depression rendered that impossible. Fewer than 100 signed up in the first couple of years. Most came from New York, attracted by the charismatic Jones. The most successful recruiter, though, was a nationally renowned sportswriter named Grantland Rice who was a member of the fledgling club’s organisation committee.

Nowadays it is extraordinary to think that such an exclusive club was desperate to attract members. Roberts sent out thousands of unsolicited, unsuccessful invitations as he sought to tap into the enthusiasm for the game prevailing in the 1930s. Only the contributions of a small handful of wealthy men, including Singer Sewing Machine heir Alfred Severin Bourne, kept the club alive in those early years. They provided five-year loans at a six per cent interest rate. The debts were never repaid.

Course construction began in February 1932 but the plans for a grand clubhouse and a second layout were shelved. Three years earlier, Jones had played at a brand new layout in California. It was his first look at Cypress Point and he loved it. He also played in Santa Cruz and was similarly impressed. Both courses were designed by Dr Alister MacKenzie, an English physician of Scottish heritage. Jones determined that MacKenzie was the architect he needed. The man Roberts referred to as ‘Doc’ came up with the design and the building work progressed at astonishing speed despite the ongoing financial difficulties.

MacKenzie would never be properly rewarded for what became one of the greatest courses in the world. His initial fee of $10,000 was halved and by late 1932, when the course had been in play for several months, he had received only $2,000. This didn’t even come close to covering his expenses. David Owen quotes a letter written by MacKenzie on Boxing Day that year that revealed his dire circumstances: ‘I’m at the end of my tether, no one has paid me a cent since last June, we have mortgaged everything we have and not yet been able to pay the nursing expenses of my wife’s operation . . . Can you possibly let me have, at any rate, five hundred dollars to keep us out of the poor house?’

Eventually Roberts agreed to issue two short-term notes for $1,000 with a nominal rate of six per cent. He reasoned that MacKenzie could sell the notes to realise some cash but warned that he would have no chance of finding a buyer for them in Augusta. The locals would know that the notes were worthless, since the club was already defaulting on payments for items as mundane as toilet rolls. MacKenzie died a poor man in 1934 at the age of 63 and never saw his masterpiece come to fruition. He hadn’t seen the Augusta National for two years before his death. On his final visit, the grass hadn’t yet been planted.

Despite all the problems, the course was clearly of the highest quality. The United States Golf Association’s tournament committee chairman was Prescott S. Bush, whose second child George would become President of the United States. He played the course and raised the notion of it staging the 1934 US Open. It would have been the first time America’s national championship had been played in a Southern State and the idea appealed to Jones. However, the proposal never materialised. This was a big blow. Without staging a prestigious event, Augusta National had little chance of surviving.

So Roberts came up with the idea of staging their own private tournament and it was included in the PGA’s list of events for 1934, to be played on 22–25 March. For it to succeed, Roberts had to convince Jones to play, but the latter was reluctant. He was aware that he would have a vital role in attracting the biggest stars of the day, but that if he invited his friends to compete, he would be expected to play as well. He had retired from competition in 1930 and his game was rusty. Roberts was able to convince him, however, and made sure there would be no about-turn by announcing officially: ‘Bobby Jones has agreed to make this tournament the one exception to his rule against further participation in tournament golf. He does this with the thought of helping to establish a new golfing event that it is hoped may assume the proportion of an important tournament.’

From the outset, Roberts wanted to call it ‘the Masters’ but Jones felt the title was immodest. For its first five years it was called the ‘Augusta National Invitation Tournament’. It was the first 72-hole event to be scheduled over four days. Other championships were run over three, with the final two rounds played on Saturday. It was the first tournament to be played on a course with contouring specially designed to provide good lines of sight for spectators. The fairways were roped off and there were grandstands. It had an on-course scoreboard network, security guards to keep order and was covered live on nationwide radio. All of these were groundbreaking developments for tournament golf in the US.

Horton Smith won the first event. It is unclear whether it held major status. Some historians argue that that did not come until the following year, when Gene Sarazen won after holing his four-wood second shot over the pond for an albatross at the 15th (the ‘shot that was heard around the world’), while others say it took Sam Snead’s epic playoff victory over Ben Hogan in 1954, a full 20 years later, for it to be regarded as a major.

By then the tournament was universally known as ‘the Masters’. Roberts’ desired moniker had never been a secret and had been picked up by players and press alike. In 1938 Jones finally came around to the idea.

The success of the tournament enabled the Augusta National Golf Club to attract civic and private investment. Membership numbers finally began to grow. The early years were still a struggle, though, with tournament entry numbers dipping after 72 players had competed in the first running; the club needed to be financially restructured. The Masters was vital to its future – without the tournament the club would undoubtedly have gone out of business.

The event had to provide value for money for spectators. Out of this need grew the Masters’ tradition for hospitality, cheap refreshments and pristine presentation. It had to set itself apart from the rest and gain a unique reputation that would make people want to return. This played to Roberts’ exceptional eye for detail, which extended to him insisting on referring to the fans as ‘patrons’. The visiting press were also warmly welcomed and well treated, thus encouraging them to provide glowing reports about the course and the competition.

Initially, the two nines were reversed, so that the current ninth green was the home hole. They were switched because Augusta is primarily a winter course, shutting its doors during Georgia’s oppressive summer heat. When it is open, the lowest part of the course, and specifically the world-famous 12th green, is prone to early-morning frosts. By switching the nines there is more time for the putting surface to thaw before players arrive at ‘Amen Corner’ – the stretch of holes beginning with the 11th green and taking in the short par-3 12th and the drive on the dogleg par-5 13th. The holes are laid out around Rae’s Creek and members originally knew the stretch as ‘the water loop’. Sports Illustrated writer Herbert Warren Wind came up with the name Amen Corner in 1958. It was inspired by a jazz recording, ‘Shouting at Amen Corner’, that he had heard in his early years at Yale. Wind felt the 1958 Masters, won for the first time by Arnold Palmer, was decided through this stretch of holes – a place where prayers had been answered.

Palmer was the heartbeat of golf’s boom-time in the 1950s and 60s and the Masters was a prime beneficiary. Before him, Gene Sarazen, Walter Hagen, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan had been the trailblazers. They had helped the Masters force its way into the sporting consciousness and the event was starting to assume considerable significance. Roberts wrote in 1939: ‘While we may not have expected it originally, we have created a tournament of such importance that we are bound to see that it continues.’ It was a vital ethos, because the world was about to go to war.

The Masters continued through to 1942 when Nelson earned a thrilling playoff victory over Hogan but soon after the club was shut and mothballed. A skeleton staff tended the course and the grass was kept in check by grazing cattle. Turkeys were also invited to make the most of the dormant golfing facilities and became welcome Christmas gifts for members (it turned out that the turkeys were profitable, while the cattle made a loss as well as damaging the fairways).

With the Second World War nearing its end, Augusta reopened in late 1944. The clubhouse had been renovated shortly before the hostilities, with the attic converted into sleeping quarters (known as the Crow’s Nest, it is still offered as overnight accommodation to amateurs competing in the Masters). Peacetime brought an influx of new members and a significant upturn in the financial fortunes of the club. At last it was possible to develop the facilities and, for the first time, Roberts considered capping the membership. What had set out to be a thriving cosmopolitan country club was now finding its identity as an ultra-exclusive golfing establishment.

Roberts still needed to win the argument with the club over whether to continue with the Masters; he succeeded and the tournament returned to the schedule in 1946. Jones was invited by Roberts to take charge of the event from 1950 but a progressive, incurable back condition prevented him from taking the post. He remained as a consultant to Roberts, who continued as tournament chairman.

Golf began to boom again and the tournament boomed with it, gathering international renown as first Palmer (with four victories) and then Jack Nicklaus became the game’s dominant figures, watched by huge television audiences.

The club, meanwhile, became the preserve of the business, legal and political elite. President Eisenhower was a member and had his own on-site cabin. Being admitted for membership and being granted the right to wear the club’s famous green jacket was accorded to the very few.

How exactly does one become a member? ‘Well, firstly, you don’t ask, that’s a certainty,’ says Michaux. ‘You do very well in whatever your industry is and I guess you know the right person. The club doesn’t go on membership drives. The one thing I do know is do not express interest in joining. Most of these guys are all members of the same elite clubs.’

The Masters also received vast revenues from discreet sponsors and from broadcast rights fees. All this would have been impossible to predict in the early days, when the establishment of a successful golf course, never mind one of the world’s greatest sporting events, was in grave doubt.

Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the Miami hurricane of 1926, Augusta National would never have existed. And if it hadn’t been for the economic crash during the following decade, the club may well have been of a much more open and less exclusive character and the Masters would have none of its unique idiosyncrasies. As Michaux points out: ‘Basically, the whole Masters tournament was founded on a series of failures.’

From these setbacks a grand tournament has emerged that illuminates early spring, played on a course of immense, undulating beauty and perfectly designed for thrilling stadium golf. It has produced and showcased great champions, men who dominated their eras; Sarazen, Nelson, Snead, Hogan and Palmer. From South Africa, Gary Player became the first overseas winner. Nicklaus triumphed six times between 1963 and 1986 when he added immeasurably to Masters folklore by charging home to victory, aged 46. Tom Watson was twice a victor and in 1980 Seve Ballesteros became the first European to don the famous green jacket that is presented to the champion. Bernhard Langer (twice), Sandy Lyle, Sir Nick Faldo (three times), Ian Woosnam and José María Olazábal (twice) claimed further European victories.

And then there was Tiger Woods, who stormed to a 12-shot win, smashing records to smithereens in an extraordinary professional debut at Augusta in 1997. He finished 18 under par. It was the first of four Masters wins for the man who transformed the game as it headed into the 21st century.

Woods’ victory had added significance because he was the first black Masters champion. Augusta’s rather dubious record in race relations reflected the elitism that pervaded much of American golf. The club was not alone in having an all-white membership policy but it was a stain on its reputation. Roberts is reported to have said: ‘As long as I’m alive, all the golfers will be white and all the caddies will be black.’

It wasn’t until 1975 that the Masters had a black competitor when Lee Elder took part. Virginia television executive Ron Townsend was the first African-American to be invited to join as a member, in 1990. The issue of minority members at private clubs had become a major talking point that summer. The PGA Championship was due to be held at Shoal Creek in Birmingham, Alabama. The club had no black members, but changed policy after the club’s founder, Hall Thompson (an Augusta member), ignited controversy by telling his local newspaper: ‘I think we’ve said that we don’t discriminate in every other area except the blacks.’

In response, the PGA Tour announced that it would not hold tournaments at clubs discriminating on the basis of race, religion, sex or national origin. Although the Masters is not run by the PGA Tour, the Augusta National made sure they invited Townsend before the club reopened after summer that year. ‘I think some credit has to go to the folks at the club,’ Townsend said. ‘It was something they wanted to do. They said it had been on their plate for the last several months.’

The Augusta National still discriminated on grounds of sex and it remained an all-male club until 2012 when former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and businesswoman Darla Moore became members. This came nine years after a protest by women’s rights activist Martha Burk, who picketed the club’s gates during tournament week. The club, led by Chairman Hootie Johnson, refused to yield. If they were to change, they would do so on their own terms.

In fact, the eventual admission of women members was more a reflection of the way the game had changed. In his prime, Woods became the biggest sports star in the world. His 14 major titles and his utter domination, through an athleticism never seen before in the game, helped golf win the argument for a return to the Olympics. For the sport to be accepted in such an inclusive environment, discriminatory membership policies would be hard to tolerate. Two years later the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews followed suit and invited female members for the first time.

Regardless of such controversies, the Masters moved steadily from strength to strength. Woods’ great rival, the left-hander Phil Mickelson, won three times (2004, 2006 and 2010) as the tournament’s resonance grew ever louder. The club was growing in other ways too. It invested heavily in buying up an entire housing area across the Berckmans Road that borders the Amen Corner side of the course. Parking facilities were thus improved and space freed up for a new driving range, now regarded as the best of its kind in the world. This was only made possible by the vast financial reserves that this once pauper club now commanded.

‘There were some hold-outs who resented the plan,’ Michaux says. ‘I believe the last home was sold for $3 million – it was a house probably bought for $25–30,000. Throughout the process, the property values went up and people who didn’t want to move had to go because they couldn’t afford the taxes once their property values went up. So there was probably some resentment in the community but ultimately Augusta tries to do the fair thing for these people. They have the means to do that, they’re not trying to be the evil landlord. Now they’re starting to do that on the other side for some other projects.’

Those plans are likely to involve housing for the hundred or so competitors and their entourages during the Masters. It’s akin to building golf’s version of the Vatican City, but one that will only be occupied for a single week of the year. What a week, though. ‘It’s called the second Christmas or the 53rd fiscal week of the year,’ explains Michaux. ‘It means that much to the businesses, restaurants and to the hotels in particular. They charge fees that are seven, eight, nine, ten times their normal rates. A hotel downtown goes for $700 a night during Masters week. You can get it for $100 any other time.’

In the period when hotel rooms go for $100 a night you would barely be aware of the club’s presence. Drive up the six-lane dual carriageway that is Washington Road from its intersection with the Interstate 20 and you will encounter the usual fast-food outlets, malls and shops, car dealerships and tyre fitters. At the top of the hill stands an obsolete water tower topped by a pristine white tank. If you could climb it, you would have a perfect vista of the course.

Beyond the traffic lights, a few hundred yards further on the right, hangs an unprepossessing sign: ‘Augusta National Golf Club, Members Only’. On the other side of the gates runs a perfectly straight drive, bordered by the same magnolia trees that stood in the days of Dennis Redmond’s indigo plantation. The drive, known as Magnolia Lane, leads to a turning area, ‘Founders Circle’, where a plaque commemorates the lives of Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts. Jones died of his debilitating spinal condition on 18 December 1971, three months short of his 70th birthday. Six years later, after months of ill health, Roberts followed his mother’s example and killed himself with a shotgun. Aged 83, he died on the golf course that defined his life.

Between the Founders Circle and the course stands the clubhouse. Supplemented by wings on either side, the heart of the building remains the farmhouse that has stood since 1854 – the one depicted in that faded picture hanging on the wall in Augusta’s shopping centre.

On the day after the 2015 Masters, strolling around the shops, it would have been hard to imagine the sporting drama that had been played out just a couple of miles away over the four preceding days, but for the fact that the image of a very special young man was beaming out of every television in the mall.

CHAPTER 2

In Search of the Slam

There is a secret to good golf or, rather, a common denominator that runs like a thread through every great round. It applies to the hacker as much as to the greats. To fulfil their on-course potential, players will invariably have employed this simple maxim. It has little to do with technique but everything to do with execution. It is more about mental discipline and less to do with scoring and, although it lies at the heart of conquering this most frustrating of games, it is, in fact, somewhat dull. It is a cliché because it is undeniably true. The secret of good golf is to take it one shot at a time.

All golfers can recall countless occasions when they have got ahead of themselves only to suffer card-wrecking setbacks. On the rare days when you find that bubble of concentration, though, where all you consider is the shot at hand, you eliminate the errors and end up with a score likely to satisfy your ambitions.

Rarely would I dare to venture an opinion on the key elements to good golf. It is certainly not my area of expertise. I’ve played enough bad golf, however, to have some idea of where things go wrong, and I’ve interviewed enough top players to identify the mental state that yields the best play.

The players called in for press interviews on any given day are those who have excelled. To a man – or woman – they will tell you how hard they have been working. This is a given. No one survives on a professional tour without hours and hours of focused, dedicated practice. As the PGA Tour advert tells us: ‘These guys are good’. If the best amateur in your club plays off scratch, it is worth remembering that most Tour pros would be rated around seven or eight strokes better. They make a lucrative living by forging inherent golfing talent with sheer graft. But for those who have played well there is usually this other common factor – of ‘being in the moment’ and ‘not getting ahead of themselves’. Like a snooker player building a break, their policy on the course is easy to identify: Hit the shot that makes the next stroke as easy as possible. To do this, they retain a clear mental focus on how to perform whichever shot is required.

As an interviewer, it is difficult to tempt top players out of their bubbles by asking them what victory that week would mean to them. They may have started well, but it is only one round of golf. As reporters, we want to drag them into speculation, because it helps us inform our audiences of the personal context of a fine performance. We try our luck on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays but invariably we draw a blank. Pros know that the job is only a quarter, half or three-quarters done and there is no point in contemplating the consequences of victory. To do that would be to take their eye off the ball. It would be counter-productive and make it impossible to retain that all-important state of being in the moment.

One shot at a time. Golf’s golden rule.

But every rule needs its exception. And in the summer of 2014 the break from conventional wisdom happened to come from the man playing the best golf in the world.

Rory McIlroy was sitting in the Royal Liverpool media tent after a third-round 68. As heavy rain pounded the canvas above, he could sit back and enjoy a six-stroke lead heading into the final round of The Open Championship. Aged 25, he had already won the US Open and PGA – a success rate similar to that of Tiger Woods when he began his brilliantly prolific career.

All who witnessed McIlroy’s prowess that week saw he was firmly on course to add a third major. His play had been exemplary, starting with consecutive rounds of 66. On Saturday he had finished eagle, bogey, eagle. I walked every step of his round, commentating for BBC 5Live, and saw each of his 68 strokes. This was a man who was undoubtedly living, thinking and playing within the boundaries of the moment. We later learned that he had two buzz words; ‘spot’ and ‘process’. He was concentrating totally on the spot that he wanted to hit his ball over, and on the process by which he would do it. Nothing else.

Yet McIlroy did allow himself to be drawn into the question of what might be the consequences of him turning his commanding lead into victory. And his answer was revealing.

It showed that he was fully aware of what was at stake at Hoylake, that week in July 2014. He not only let his mind contemplate his first Open triumph but also allowed it to race eight months ahead, to the following April. ‘It would mean a lot of hype going into Augusta next year,’ he laughed.

McIlroy was embracing the fact that an Open victory would leave him just a Masters green jacket short of a full set of major trophies. ‘Not a lot of people have achieved the career grand slam,’ he added. ‘And if everything goes the right way tomorrow, to get three-quarters of the way there is some achievement by the age of 25. I’d be in pretty illustrious company.’

McIlroy added a cautionary ‘let’s not get ahead of ourselves’ before trying to refocus on the here and now. ‘It would mean an awful lot,’ he said. ‘I never thought that I’d be able to be in this position. I didn’t think that I’d even have the chance at 25 to go for three legs of the grand slam.

‘So I’m going to try to put all of that out of my head. It would be way too much to think about and way too much to ponder. First things first. Just play a good solid round of golf tomorrow.’

And McIlroy did exactly that. One shot at a time, 71 times over, to yield a finishing score of 271 – 17 under par – and two strokes better than Spain’s Sergio García and the young American Rickie Fowler.

Both runners-up played spirited rounds that ensured McIlroy could not afford to lose sight of the ‘spot’ and the ‘process’ that had kept him at the top of the leaderboard for the entire week. The man from Holywood in Northern Ireland emerged beaming, clutching the precious Claret Jug.

McIlroy was at the start of an astonishing run of form. At Hoylake he carded rounds of 66-66-68-71; two weeks later he surged to victory in the WGC Bridgestone Invitational with scores of 69-64-66-66 at Firestone in Akron, Ohio, before collecting back-to-back major titles with his triumph at the PGA Championship at Valhalla where he carded rounds of 66-67-67-68. In those 12 rounds against the best players in the world, McIlroy failed to break 70 just once (on the day he clinched The Open title). He was a combined 48 under par through this blistering spell of golf in which he leapt in status from a twice to four-time major winner. McIlroy was proven correct with the comments he made on the Saturday evening of that glorious week at Hoylake. With just the Masters to be won to complete a full set of majors, there was, indeed, plenty of hype as he headed towards Augusta the following April.

But by the time the appointed week rolled around it wasn’t just McIlroy who was generating huge interest. The Northern Irishman remained the prime figure and the bookmakers’ favourite to make it three majors in a row, but a growing list of players vied for their share of the limelight. There was a returning Tiger Woods, a resurgent Dustin Johnson, the inform Jimmy Walker. And there was a fresh-faced youngster from Texas.

Jordan Spieth was playing his second Masters, having finished runner-up to Bubba Watson on his debut, 12 months earlier. He was just 21 years old, but his quest for a Masters victory had been a lifelong ambition. ‘The Masters is more than just a golf tournament and it appeals to more than just the standard golf fan,’ Spieth said. ‘And I think it’s really cool. That’s why I love that tournament so much, because even all my friends back in the day that didn’t even like golf or care much for golf always wanted to watch the Masters and would talk to me about it.’

He had very nearly won at his first attempt. Victory in 2014 would have put him alongside Fuzzy Zoeller, who in 1979 became the only other debutant Masters winner apart from Horton Smith, who won the inaugural tournament in 1934. Spieth led by two strokes after seven holes of the final round but stumbled around the turn as Bubba Watson forged clear to claim his second green jacket.

‘The only thing I’m thinking about is “when am I getting back next year?” That’s what’s on my mind, because it’s tough. It’s tough being in this position,’ Spieth said immediately afterwards. ‘I’ve worked my whole life to lead Augusta on Sunday, and although I feel like it’s very early in my career, and I’ll have more chances, it’s a stinger. I had it in my hands and I could have gone forward with it and just didn’t quite make the putts and that’s what it came down to.’

Spieth was clearly on golf’s fast-track to glory. He had won the John Deere Classic as a 19-year-old and was a wildcard pick for the American Presidents Cup team that took on the Internationals in 2013. The following season, he ended the year by winning the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan before triumphing in the Australian Open by six strokes after firing a course record 63 in tough, windy conditions in the final round at Sydney’s Australian Golf Club.

That field boasted defending champion McIlroy as well as leading Australians Adam Scott and Jason Day. Spieth would reflect. ‘I think the Australian Open may have been the most important tournament that I’ve ever played. At the time, it had been maybe a year and a half since winning the John Deere in that playoff where I kind of squeaked in, luckily. I put myself in a position and just had a level of patience that I had not had when I was in contention prior to that.

‘I was trying to get off to too fast a start and not realising the length of a round and how a final round in contention can almost feel like two rounds. You have to maintain the same patience the whole way. That’s what we did that day. Didn’t let anything get to us; the roars in front, the scoreboard changes. And I shot arguably the best round I’ve ever played when tied for the lead. So it was a huge, huge boost for me.’

The following week he triumphed in Tiger Woods’ limited-field Hero Challenge event in Florida. Spieth had officially come of age and acquired the winning habit in impressive style.

At the start of 2015 he had three top-seven finishes early in the year before claiming the Valspar Championship in Tampa at the end of the Florida swing of tournaments in March. Then came a massive spell for the young Texan, with two stops in his home state in the weeks immediately before the Masters. At the Valero Texas Open he finished runner-up to Walker by four strokes. The following week at the Shell Houston Open, Spieth came up just short in a three-man playoff won by J. B. Holmes, with the youngster sharing the runner-up spoils with Johnson Wagner.