The Masters

Augusta National Golf Club opened in Augusta, Georgia in 1933. It was the dream and brain child of the legendary golfer Bobby Jones. In 1934 the first Masters golf tournament was held and was won by Horton Smith. This was the start of what has become the most prestigious golf tournament in the world. It has always been an invitation only golf tournament.

Grave Site Of Bobby Jones
Historic Oakland Cemetery – Atlanta, Georgia

Before it was Augusta National it was an indigo plantation and then a nursery. Each hole is named for a plant, shrub, or tree that will be in bloom during the Masters Tournament. 1-Tea Olive; 2- Pink Dogwood;3-Flowering Peach;4-Flowering Crab Apple;5-Magnolia;6-Juniper;7-Pampas;8-Yellow Jasmine;9-Carolina Cherry;10-Camellia;11-White Dogwood;12-Golden Bell;13-Azalea;14-Chinese Fir;15-Firethorn;16-Redbud;17-Nandina;18-Holly.

Mark Twain said that “golf was a good walk spoiled”. He never walked Augusta National. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Even non-golfers want to go to Augusta just to see its beauty.

I bring up The Masters, because it starts next week (10-13 April 2014). You might also wonder what golf has to do with genealogy. It is part of my heritage. Masters tickets have been in my family for over 40 years. Before Daddy got season tickets we would go the day of the tournament and get a paper ticket to watch that day’s round of golf. I still have one of the round paper tickets that admitted us to the game. Now you can only get tickets by being a season ticket holder and it is the hardest ticket in sports to obtain. And I still have a number of the tickets that the family and friends used to get into the game.

A Few Master Tickets

 

Next week my brother and his wife, and my nephew and his wife will continue with the family tradition by going to the Masters.

Golf has always been part of my life and the life of my family. During the depression my Daddy, William D. Taylor, would caddy to earn money for the family. It’s during this time that he learned to play. It was because of golf that the family was able to bury my granddaddy, Eugene Smith Taylor, in 1938. At one time Daddy caddied for an insurance salesman and he took out a small life insurance policy on Granddaddy Gene without telling anyone. Granddaddy Gene lost his job on the L&N railroad during the depression. He never had a steady job after that, so times were hard for the family. In 1938 he went to Evansville, Indiana to get a job with the railroad. He was staying with his sister Daisy Taylor Chandler and her family. Granddaddy Gene got the job and wrote to his wife Norma that they would be moving to Evansville. The next day he was in the bathroom shaving and getting ready to go to work and he had a heart attack and died. The family was able to afford the funeral in Erin, Tennessee, because my Daddy had taken out that small life insurance policy on him years earlier.

As a child I would occassionally caddy for Daddy on a Saturday or Sunday. He’d play golf at the Highland Country Club in Conyers, Georgia. I’d pull the cart that held his bag through 18 holes of golf. I got paid 50 cents and whatever I wanted to eat at the club house. I also remember him playing  on a golf course in Milstead, Georgia that had sand greens. That’s the only golf course I’ve seen that ever had them.

Daddy thought that you could learn things outside of a classroom setting and would let us skip school to attend a golf tournament. I’m so thankful that he did.

One year he took me to the Atlanta Golf Classic in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a Wednesday and was Pro-Am Day. It’s a day I will never forget. Because it was Pro-Am Day I was able to take a camera into the tournament. That day I got to see celebrities, well known pro golfers and young up and coming golfers. I was able to talk to them, ask for an autograph and if I could take their pictures. This was in 1968.

I met Reverend Billy Graham, Jets quarterback Joe Namath, Coach Bear Bryant, Phil Harris (voice of Belew in the Jungle Book), Pat Boone, Chuck Connors.

Danny Thomas

When I asked to take a picture and get an autograph of Danny Thomas he joked with me. He wanted to know why I wanted a picture of him and his autograph, because his daughter Marlo was the famous person in the family. My brother Teal was one of the few people to get an autograph from Mickey Mantle. He also got Rocky Marciano’s (heavyweight fight champion). Marciano died the next year in an airplane crash. I’ll always remember the surprised look on a young golfer’s face when Teal asked him for his autograph. In 1975 I watched this same golfer birdie 7 straight holes at the Masters. He came close to winning the tournament that year. His name was Johnny Miller.

Pat Boone, Phil Harris, Rev. Billy Graham, Arnold Palmer

 

Then there were the professional golfers: Gardner Dickinson, Gay Brewer, Tommy Jacobs, Bob Charles, Tony Jacklin, Bruce Crampton, Doug Sanders,Tommy Aaron, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, George Archer just to name a few. But my all time favorite is Chi Chi Rodriguez.

Chi Chi Rodriguez

Chi Chi stopped in the fairway to come over and sign my piece of paper, let me take a picture and talk to me. I was wearing a coolie hat Daddy had brought to me from Viet Nam. He teased me about my hat – calling it a Palmer Hat and saying we should trade hats so he could have a Palmer Hat. He kept up a running conversation with me all the way down the fairway.  I will always remember the kindness he showed a 16 year old girl

The biggest surprise came the next day when I went to school. A couple of my friends knew where I was going on Wednesday, but I didn’t let a whole lot of people know. Several people I hadn’t told came up to me before school started and said we know where you were yesterday, because your picture was in the paper. I didn’t know what they were talking about, so I went to the school library and went through the sports section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  Yes my picture was in the paper and I was in the picture with Joe Namath!

Joe Namath

Although, the Pro Am tournaments were fun my heart will always belong to Augusta National and The Masters. It’s there that I will always see Daddy and my brother Gene walking down the fairway talking to Gene Sarazen. It’s there that I was part of Arnie’s Army when I was a child and being amazed at seeing people standing 12 deep around the green, beside the fairway, and around  the tee box just to watch this man play. And years later I was there to see Arnie play his last round as a competitor. It’s there that I sat in Amen Corner and watched a young up and coming golfer named Tiger Woods. I’ve been to the tournament when it was so cold that you had to wear a heavy coat and gloves, and when it was so hot you wish you were in a bathing suit. It was at Augusta where I  for the first time saw my Daddy (a non drinker) ask my college friend if he wanted a beer and my friend accepted. It’s there where people become friends for a day, share their homemade peanut butter fudge or put suntan lotion on your arms and shoulders so you won’t burn, and where people will be leaving and will give you their spot, because it’s a better vantage point to view the game. And it was there that I’ve seen golfers’ dreams die  on the 17th, because of the Eisenhower Tree. Sadly the Eisenhower Tree was lost this year to an ice storm. The landscape of Augusta will never be the same.

You can learn many things from watching golf at a place like Augusta National. You learn there is a time to talk and a time to be quiet; you learn to obey rules; you learn to concentrate on what’s happening around you; you learn to enjoy the walk and the beauty that’s around you; but most of all you learn respect for others and for your surroundings.

So if you get the opportunity to go to the Masters take it. Even if you don’t like golf you will end up loving Augusta National.