COLUMN: Looking back at Macon’s Riverside CC (The Brickyard) and Sunday at The Masters
NOTE: 10 years ago I wrote a story about my trip back to Georgia to watch the final round of the 2009 Masters and visit Macon, the city I left forty years before. This excerpt is about Macon’s Brickyard GC and the 2009 Masters, maybe appropriate in this April without a tournament.
The Masters golf tournament is the first – and for me the most exciting – major championship of the year. I’ve been watching it on television every year since I can remember. I left Macon after graduating from Lanier High School in 1969, and returned to my native California. Now retired, I have decided to pay the price to attend the Masters at least once, and visit the city I left decades ago.
Bobby Jones built the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club in the 1930s and began hosting the event every April. The designer said the course was always there, he just came along and found it. Admission is limited, with badges passed down from generation to generation and gray-market resale values sometimes reaching many thousands of dollars. Thanks to the great recession, single round tickets are available on eBay this year for less than the cost of a used car.
In 1967 my family joined Riverside Country Club, located outside the city limits. Its steep rocky fairways and scraggly woods weren’t much to look at, and the hard Bermuda grass greens were unkind. The course had several swampy areas that we quickly learned to avoid. Worse than a lost golf ball and the penalty stroke were the various venomous snakes that lurked there. At the top of a hill sat a nondescript stucco clubhouse with an uneven gravel parking lot and a rock-encrusted driving range. On the far side of the lot was a swimming pool that was the club’s best feature.
Having flown into Atlanta on Friday night, the next morning I drive the rental car down to Macon and head directly to the golf course. An intricately patterned brick wall now runs the entire length of the long driveway leading to a matching brick clubhouse with a large newly-paved parking lot. Inside I meet the club’s manager, Luis, who puts me in a motorized cart to tour the course.
The golf course, renamed The Brickyard, is barely reminiscent of the one I remember occupying this parcel of land. The fairways are lush, the greens appear receptive to shots, and a layer of tan pine straw covers the ground in the woods, providing a contrast to the color and texture of the rich green fairways. What once were swamps are now small lakes and several greens are scenically perched at the water’s edge. There is just enough left of the former layout to remind me of evenings spent here with my dad and my beagle Fred, who would bay in the distance as he chased rabbits through the pervasive piney woods. I return to the clubhouse where Luis invites me to play the private course, but I hadn’t brought my clubs and my time is limited so I thank him but decline the offer.
The next morning is Masters Sunday. I head out early and stop for breakfast at a Waffle House. There seems to be at least one of these restaurants at every exit along the interstate leading into Augusta. This particular exit has one on each side of the highway, apparently for easy access from either direction of travel. I order bacon and eggs with toast.
The waitress asks in a thick accent that was once quite familiar to me, “You want any grits or hash browns with that?” I’m sure she throws in the ‘hash browns’ because of my (non-Southern) accent.
“No thanks” I reply, thinking a thousand calories are probably enough for breakfast.
“Scrambled eggs…toast…bacon!” she shouts to the cook, and adds “Hold the grits!”
I smile at the thought of the cook with a handful of grits.
I arrive early at Augusta National, hours before the first tee time. It is as pristine and perfectly groomed as I had imagined, more so than one could ever expect from a natural landscape. The holes are familiar to me from many years of watching on television. I now see that those images emanate from cameras perched atop permanent steel towers painted green to blend in with the surroundings. Trees discreetly hide the rest rooms that are actual buildings with real toilets and sinks, not the rows of portable fiberglass outhouses of lesser events like the United States Open. I treat myself to a beer with a famous pimento-and-cheese sandwich that sells for an unbelievable dollar-and-a-half.
The Masters is always memorable for one reason or another and this year is no exception. Greg Norman, who at this point late in his career has never won the Masters but finished in the top five eight times, has qualified to play again this year. He and another aging favorite Fred Couples look like they might contend, but then both fade and miss the weekend cut. As always, a few lesser-known young players also post low scores in the early rounds but disappear by Sunday.
Past champions Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are seemingly out of reach of winning when they tee off together in a rare Sunday pairing of two of the sport’s marquis players and I don’t want to miss it. Hours before the leaders are scheduled to play, Phil makes a run at the lead by posting six birdies on the front nine. Tiger makes a move on the back nine and pulls even with Phil at the top of the leader board. I find myself in the midst of a burgeoning gallery following the pair that shifts the center of gravity of the entire event away from the established leaders who are just beginning their rounds. An historic come-from-behind victory from one of them ultimately fails to materialize as they both falter on the final holes.
This year’s event is a comeback of sorts for Woods who is recovering from recent knee surgery. The following year his world will come crashing down when the story breaks about his marital infidelities followed by more injury issues and then the even more shocking demise of his golf swing.
In the end it is an Argentine, Angel Cabrera who wins the tournament in a dramatic playoff with two other players. Forty-one years before, as my dad and I watched from our living room in Macon, Angel’s compatriot and friend, Roberto DiVicenzo lost this tournament on a technicality by signing an incorrect scorecard. He was 45 years old at the time and never again made the cut here. Golf, like life, can sometimes be cruel.
The victory by the Argentine seems somehow to right an old injustice. I feel fortunate to witness the beauty of Augusta National, and although I am not able to play it, the Brickyard proves to be a polished gem. The trip is a success on all fronts and I’m sure this will not be my last visit to Macon and Augusta.