Never does a visit to Augusta National Golf Club during Masters week disappoint. The stage is so massive, the sights and sounds so abundant, the emotional attachments so deep.
There are no wrong answers when you are asked to cite your favorite viewing spot, be it behind two green or seven green, down at Amen Corner, in the whirl of action at No. 16, or up near the tree behind the clubhouse where people-watching is abundant.
If you mention a list of traditions you cling to, do not feel badly if your list stretches to seven or eight. Pimiento or classic chicken? Peach ice cream sandwiches or oatmeal raisin cookies? Wide-brimmed or bucket? Your call is never wrong. It is a pilgrimage, after all, and routines and customs are to be embraced with all the might you can muster.
Smiles aplenty arrive when you are at Augusta National the week of the Masters and sometimes they come in most unexpected ways. For instance, you are still engulfed in a dark, spring chill just before 6 a.m. and there is more time to speak with the wonderful people at the security entrance.
The question one morning was standard fare, “How are you?” she was asked, but it was her response that stopped me. It was so sweet and uplifting. “Blessed,” she answered.
From the walk into the press building to the routine of making a coffee and enjoying the early-morning serenity, her response made me smile and to envy her. What kept tossing around in my head was this thought: How at peace are you when you say you “are blessed” at the start of the day?
So beautiful.
Later that day, that thought resurfaced when a favorite tradition was revived. Meeting someone from the international press who was visiting the Masters for the first time is always delightful, even more so when they have an attitude as charming as did the young man from Austria.
Felix Haselsteiner, a sportswriter for Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, was seeing Augusta National and writing about the Masters from inside the press building for the first time. The 29-year-old was like so many of us in this building – in love with sports and passionate about a career in storytelling – so to finally arrive at a place for which he felt a kinship, having watched it on television for years, was a dream come true.
What warmed the heart was to hear Felix tell you how the Masters and Augusta National were even more incredible than he envisioned.
“It is an honor to be here,” he said. “These people, these members, they are so welcoming. It feels as if they truly are hosting us.”
Growing up in Austria, Felix developed “a great love for the game” and he serves as a much-needed reminder that time is forever marching forward. To someone who came of age when Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus ruled golf, it was enlightening to hear Felix say it wasn’t Tiger Woods who ignited his interest (“I wasn’t alive when he was born”) but icons of the next generation –Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth.
“Rory and Jordan are the reasons why I play golf and why I follow golf,” said Felix, who emphasized that that was why he felt a deep reverence for the task he had Sunday night – to write for his readers a story about the emotional triumph McIlroy had recorded. “Do not underestimate that this is a dream for me, too.”
Felix Haselsteiner rekindled an emotion that has percolated within me for 25 years, or since my eyes first fell on the splendor of Augusta National. A promise was made years ago that never, ever would this place, this experience, and this tournament be taken for granted.
Watching and listening to Felix prompted me to re-emphasize that promise to myself.
As much as his trip to the Masters ended with the opportunity to write about Rory McIlroy’s career Grand Slam-clinching win, what was the biggest selling point to get credentialed for the Masters was the chance to report on the 41st and final Masters appearance for Germany’s Bernhard Langer.
“Obviously, Mr. Langer has a very special relationship with the German people,” said Felix.
What Felix would soon discover is that Bernhard Langer has a very special relationship with everything about the Masters – the course, the tournament, the membership, and tens of thousands of patrons who saluted his every walk. Seeing the way in which Langer was held in such high esteem, the young Austrian sportswriter thought that “maybe access at a higher level” would be required to speak to the two-time champion.
Felix discovered “that I understand this place better now that I visited it,” in large part due to the way in which his access to Langer was not only allowed; it was encouraged.
It is an underrated layer of the Masters Tournament, this commendable effort by Augusta National officials to open credentials to so many international golf writers. Countless friendships have been formed through the years between writers whose readers speak different languages, though that is not a problem.
With golf, translators are not needed. It is a common language.
“Mr. Langer was the reason for this trip, but he was so open to me and his family treated me in a very special way,” said Felix. “He showed me why he is the totally great person he is.”
We are guilty, so many of us, of becoming jaded the older we get and for taking things for granted. Felix Haselsteiner offered a gentle, but brilliant, reminder that we must fight off that inclination, especially when it comes to the Masters.
Every view of the vast green landscape and every time he settled into his chair inside the ultra-comfortable press building, Felix gained a greater sense of appreciation of the Masters experience. Every opportunity to meet Langer in the quote area and every word he wrote about McIlroy served as a reminder how blessed he was.
Rory McIlroy, you see, isn’t the only one whose Augusta dream has been fulfilled. Ask Felix.
