April sets the scene for the first of four majors on the golfing calendar, when the 75th US Masters gets underway at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
The coveted green jacket – awarded since 1949 – and prize money of $1.35m (€960,000) awaits the winner, with Irish hopes of success resting with three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, last year’s US Open champion Graeme McDowell and the young but exceptionally talented Rory McElroy, who finished third in majors at both the British Open and the USPGA last year.
The Masters is the only one of the four majors that’s played at the same venue every year. The course itself is famous – or notorious – for the ‘Amen Corner’, a turn at holes 11, 12 and 13 at which many golfers have met their waterloo, with scores in double digits entering some player’s scorecards in the past: Tom Weiskopf took 13 strokes on the par-three 12th in 1980, and Tsuneyuki ‘Tommy’ Nakajima took the same number of shots on the par-five 13th two years earlier.
It’s not the length of the course but the design of greens that helps make Augusta National not one for the faint-hearted. A mere tip from the putter may send the ball rolling for what might feel like an eternity before resting where you’ve never even thought of looking.
The course and the tournament is hosts are steeped in unique traditions. To make the cut after the first two rounds, players must be in the top 44 places, including ties, or within ten strokes of the leader. The final round itself has always been played on the second Sunday of April since 1940. And the donning of the green jacket always takes place in the Butler Cabin, with the winner from the previous year putting the jacket on the new champion. On the occasion that the champion retains his title – it has happened four times in the past –the chairman of Augusta National does the honours.
The most lucrative prize for winning is automatic qualification for all four majors for the next five years, and a lifetime invitation to The Masters. It’s a prize coveted by all in professional golf.
Jack Nicklaus – the most successful golfer of all time, with 18 major wins – won six Masters titles across three decades (in 1963, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975 and 1986) before retiring in 2005. Chasing this record is Tiger Woods, who currently has 14 major wins, four of which are Masters titles. Woods has already broken the record for the lowest aggregate score over the four days (270 or 18 under par) and the widest winning margin (12 shots) when he stole the show in the 1997 Masters.
The 12-shot winning margin was at the time only second in majors history to Old Tom Morris’s 13-shot win in the 1862 British Open, but Woods subsequently surpassed it with a 15-shot margin at the US Open in 2000.
Woods’ victory in Augusta was a popular one as he became the first black man to win a major. More amazingly, he achieved the feat only seven years after Augusta abolished the rule where no black man could become a member of the club.
Cliff Roberts, co-founder of Augusta National, once said: “As long as I’m alive, golfers will be white and caddies will be black.” As Tiger Woods pulled on his green jacket for the first time, his father Earl was heard to say: “Green and black go well together, don’t they?”
