ADullAche

Ah, April is here again and it brings the annual “tradition like no other.” Now that may not mean much to you, but to those of us who flail vainly at the little white ball—then rage at the gods when that same little white ball defies the laws of physics and doesn’t fall in the hole—it means the traditionality of golf’s greatest prize; the green jacket of the Masters.

Other sports, even other golf tournaments, have trophies. The Masters has a trophy, but it’s the green sport coat—a green sport coat that doesn’t match anything—that makes this tournament golf’s brightest, dare I say lightest, star.

There may be some golf fans out there—whose mothers flirted with communism while they were in utero—who prefer the more proletariat US Open, or even the century and a half old Open Championship played across the pond. Those tournaments may have a sense of history, but for the pure soul of golf, you’d be hard pressed to match the traditionalism of Augusta National Country Club.

The last chairMAN of the club was named Hootie. If you’re going to walk around in a green sport coat and let folks call you Hootie, you have to know something most people don’t. We don’t know what Hootie didn’t know, but what Hootie did know was how to wrap himself in traditioness, how to run things, and he knew all the white people.

Golf is a complex game and that complexion needs to be guarded. Why do you think they have rules about how far technology can take the golf club, and how far tort legislation can take the Golf Club?

Lincoln’s ill conceived legislation of 1863 might have ended the “tradition like no other” if it weren’t for the stalwarts like Hootie. What would Augusta National be if it was like other clubs and had a tradition like many others? You just can’t fling traditionhood around like a putter that cost you a double nassau on the 18^th. That’s why Lee Elder didn’t get to play in the Master’s until 1975. You have to protect golf or it just becomes baseball after 1947.

Augusta National and the Masters are stewards of traditionalistic thought. It’s bigger than golf; its goes back to the time honored customs of Triangle Trade and the Middle Passage. That’s why the caddies wear those elegant white jumpsuits with their master’s names on the back—that way we’ll always know who’s who. The membership doesn’t want to confuse things and end up doing something nontradionalistical, like when they let Ron Townsend become a member in 1990. “Traditions like no other” need a vision, even if that vision seems a little blurry to those who lack traditionicity.

In the last decade or so Tiger Woods has won four green jackets, something of a tradition in itself. It’s probably why Hootie retired—seeing such an untraditioning wounded him. Hootie should have stuck around because Tiger’s tradition will eventually end and become a tradition like other traditions, leaving us the “tradition like no other.” This is the Masters lesson to us all; it’s steadfast, it’s embedded, it understands the heart of tradition is a traditionism you simply can’t change—if you do, you might as well let women join the club.

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