Golf’s Masters is understated, pretty, historic... and cool

AUGUSTA – Cool, said the Singaporean the other day in Georgia. Cool experience, he explained. One of the coolest places on earth, he insisted. Pretty cool to be doing a press conference in this land of giants, he declared. To be precise, during his interview, he used a variation of the word “cool” only 10 times.

So, yes, we get it, Hiroshi Tai is enamoured by the Masters.

It’s OK, he’s in fine company. In his press conference, Bryson DeChambeau, a two-time Major champion no less (not here, though) refers to Bobby Jones, the co-founder of the Masters as Mr Jones. He even uses the formal “patrons” for fans. DeChambeau is a content-creating free spirit, who hits balls over his house, but in this castle he treads carefully. 

Tai spent Sunday playing the front nine with the gifted Will Zalatoris and played the back nine with the same player on Tuesday. Funny stories were told and a golf course explored. This is the site, said the Singaporean, of everyone’s dreams as kids, yet he said “I’m trying not to get too caught up into the aura”. Focus is his prayer.

On Monday night, he and three other amateurs – all in contention for the silver cup given to the Low Amateur – spent the night in the Crow’s Nest at the clubhouse. It is a place of great ghosts and grand legends, with pictures of Jones and Tiger Woods on the walls, but the amateurs did what young athletes do. They watched sport. To be precise, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball event.

Tai finds himself in this nondescript corner of the American south, which every April becomes the centre of the planet’s sporting attention. Think of it as a word the Masters would approve of: Ritual. An understated one, of course. Driving down from Atlanta, which is two hours away, there is no garish advertising to loudly proclaim this event. Volume is not the Masters’ signature, restrained style is.

Out on the freeway the only sign I am in holy golf territory is when the driver takes a turn onto the Bobby Jones Expressway. Once in Augusta itself, not far from an Exxon gas station and the Fresh Market, there it is, hidden inside the pines, the green church.

This is an examination centre of skills yet a museum whose lane (Magnolia), bridges (Hogan, Nelson and Sarazen) and plaques (honouring Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer) have become points of pilgrimage. For this weekend, perhaps, tee times might override tariffs.

This is the youngest of the four Majors but it feels older than it is. All tournaments are bigger than players, but here they know they are. Everywhere you go the classic – boards listing past champions wedged into old stone walls in the press centre – elegantly meets the modern (two TV screens on every desk spitting out data).

Paintings of flowers (each hole is named after one) are on the walls as are portraits of champions. The past is sacred here. There’s a list of attending journalists at the inaugural tournament in 1934, which included Paul Gallico, famous for sparring with heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey and writing the novel The Poseidon Adventure. Their discipline lies in their detail. Down to letting you know the precise haircut the landscape has been given: 3/8th of an inch on the fairways, 1 3/8th in the second cut, ¼ on the collars, 1/8 on the greens.

Everywhere players polish, tinker, align their games, like an obsessed school of over-thinking engineers. Then the wind will blow on the weekend and the best-laid plans will fly off. How do you control your nerves, DeChambeau was asked and he replied thoughtfully.

“If you are more precise,” he said, “and you’re able to swing your golf club more consistently than others, that skill set will take care of itself. Two, you can do some breathing techniques to help calm the nerves down.

“But ultimately you’ve got to get up there and face the fear of those nerves, of that adrenaline going through your body, going, okay, I’m all right, how do I take control of this in the best way I possibly can and just let go.”

The nerves will come for Tai, but this is precisely what sets apart competitors – How much do they like it, how well do they wear it? But being here is also fun, a privilege, a kick, a thrill. On April 10, one of Tai’s opening-round playing partners will be Charl Schwartzel, 40, who has three top 10s here including a Green Jacket in 2011 when he birdied the last four holes on Sunday.

Anyway, already this week the Singaporean got to say “hello” to Scottie Scheffler, the two-time Masters champion in the tour truck (a sort of mobile workshop). And then at the range he found himself hitting balls next to an eight-time Major winner.

Yes, Tom Watson.

To use Tai’s favourite word this week, that’s seriously cool.