The Masters Par Three Contest is cute, now the serious stuff starts 

AUGUSTA – “Surreal,” says a grinning Jacky Tai to the camera.

It’s early on April 9, Wednesday, the last practice day, and swollen crowds are milling about at the Masters as the sun tries to ward off the gentle chill. The first fairway slopes and rises down into the distance and Charles Schwartzel, the 2011 champion, has just struck a three-wood as crisp as the morning.

“Did you see the ball flight?” a spectating gent wonders to his friend in admiration.

A camera crew from an Atlanta TV station has come to interview the family of Hiroshi Tai, who studies a few hours down the road at Georgia Tech. Yoko, Hiroshi’s sister, a golfer herself at Columbia University, remembers both of them watching the Masters together as kids. Now big brother is here playing it.

Dad Jacky had it right. Surreal.

Even Fred S. Ridley, chairman of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament, is impressed with the Singaporean. In his press conference, Ridley is asked about amateurism in a changing age and part of his answer includes praise for Tai.

“At our Amateur Dinner on Monday night, I was encouraged by what I heard and by all the speakers, including our amateur who spoke that night, Hiroshi Tai. A very impressive young man. He spoke from the heart. Amateur means love, and his love for the game was very clear.”

Tai, meanwhile, is loving being out on a sunshine Wednesday at the Par Three contest. This is the Masters at its most relaxed, golf purely as pleasure, not yet as pain. Thick crowds gather on the slopes, all happily hostage to this tradition. On this one day at least the contest is secondary to the celebration of golf.

Players carry their babies or are tailed by their young kids who are dressed in white overalls. Cuteness overrides competitiveness. Star-watching is a sport in itself. Condoleezza Rice, once a US secretary of state and one of the first two female members of the club, is a marshal at one of the holes. Cheers echo among the pines especially for the old timers, whose stories are the bricks of this land’s legend.

Ian Woosnam, 67, the 1991 champion, is there. Jose Maria Olazabal, 59, winner in 1994 and 1999, arrive. And then there is Ben Crenshaw, 73, who won in 1984 and then wept when he won again in 1995, for his mentor Harvey Penick had died the Sunday before the Masters.

“I believe in fate,’‘ said Crenshaw that year. This year maybe Tai says the same thing to himself for he finds himself playing alongside Crenshaw.

“It was a lot of fun,” says the Singaporean later to The Straits Times. “(Ben) does a lot for college golf in general, I’ve met him before. Very cool to play with him.” The advice he got from the great man was old-fashioned: “Good luck. Soak it all in.”

This 73-year-old American legend walking with a 23-year-old Singaporean amateur is proof that golf does not lean towards ageism. This tournament in particular has a uniquely generous attitude to those creased by time. On April 10, just past 7pm Singapore time, three men who have won 11 Green Jackets as a collective – Jack Nicklaus, 85, Tom Watson, 75, Gary Player, 89 – will strike the first balls as Honorary Starters.

Pause for a moment. This tradition is akin to Wimbledon commencing every year with a single game played on the first Monday on Centre Court with Billie Jean King on creaky knees serving to Martina Navratilova. Maybe they should try it. For what the Masters is brilliantly acknowledging is that the game belongs to the present but is preserved by the past.

To Tai, history is meaningful, for he grew up watching YouTube videos of Masters highlights. “It’s definitely cool to be here.” He must dream of making the cut, but a testing course asks for simple, practical things. “Just want to go and have a lot of fun. Just do my best on every shot. Be committed and ready to hit.”

Tai tosses his glove and ball to waiting kids but mostly a modest fellow gives little away when he talks. So his sister speaks glowingly of him. “Even keeled,” is how she describes him. She remembers him as a child, finishing his one-hour lessons but still pushing on and saw in these small moments the birth of dedication. “No one asked him to keep practising,” she says.

The moment the Par Three Contest ends, the playfulness of the Masters is done. On April 10 – Tai tees off at 11.49pm Singapore time in the first round – every stroke counts, every swing will require trust, every lipped-out putt will sting.

Kim O’Neil, a visiting golf professional from New Hampshire, who is enjoying the day, says a wonderful thing. “I come to see the course,” he says. He’s an old timer and so he knows. This stretch of manicured earth, it is quietly ready to pose the most elegantly maddening questions.