Our Masters Golf Odyssey

Apr 6, 2011 by SusanitaGB

I decided to write this Blog series on the Masters over a year ago as that is when of this adventure transpired. The Blog series did not take a year to write but because of one thing or another we did not publish it until it was too late so we decided to hold off until this years 2011 Masters and here it is.

The Masters is timeless so other than the winner on Sunday most of what you will read this week will apply to what is happening currently in Augusta Georgia. In some instances it does feel like time has stood still and you can feel Bobby Jones and Uncle Cliff’s presence as you stroll down the edge of the fairways at Augusta National.

In any case we will be posting our entire week experience along with pictures and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Happy Masters Week!!!!!!

A Week of Southern Hospitality

Sunday

We arrive at the airport in Calgary. An omen of the week to come – we are asked if we wish to upgrade to 1st class for only $89.00 per person – hooray!

On the second leg of the very comfortable flight we watched “The Legend of Baggar Vance” a movie about the daughter of a man who spent his fortune to build a beautiful golf course in the South only to see it fail because of the depression. He died, his fortune lost and the daughter is determined to have the course succeed so she talks Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen into playing a match at the course with the local hero. As we were to find out, the story is eerily familiar to the creation of Augusta National.

We pick up our rental car and drive from Charlotte NC to Augusta at record speed! We were told that Southern drivers treat the highway like a NASCAR race so we plug in the radar detector and away we go….but apparently record speed is too fast and our radar detector was not functioning because we got pulled over and had to post a $185.00 bond to cover Michael’s speeding ticket. That’s 1 or 2 less pairs of shoes for me!

On the way we had dinner at Applebey’s (my first time at that chain) and were immediately struck at the politeness and courtesy of the server. We were to discover that this is just the way Southerners are. We also noticed that there seemed to be a Waffle House at just about every exit sort of like the number of Tim Horton’s in Canada except even more! Tried to buy wine along the way but because Georgia still has “blue Sunday” we could not buy alcohol!

We arrived at our mini-mansion about 4 miles from the golf course and were greeted with a jack and diet coke by our very hospitable hosts Jim and Stephanie. I had never been quite sure of the connection Jim had with Augusta National, only that because of his connection he was able to attend the Masters every year, had club house privileges and could even play the course if he wished.

I was surprised to discover the Jim’s great uncle was none other than Cliff Roberts who along with Bobby Jones founded the Masters tournament and built the golf course! Jim is the caretaker of his family’s memorabilia and was approached by the author of a book published in 1997 entitled “The Making of the Masters”. Jim donated pictures and gave the author access to his grandmother’s and great grandmother’s diaries and as a result was awarded passes and access.

Wow! The owners of the home we rented for the week had a copy of the book so we borrowed it for our long drives over the next couple of days.