Is It Again No Don t Touch That Again
Whether or non the sport of golf game is on your radar, chances are y'all've heard of the Masters. The name itself has an air of irresistible pomposity about it. Famously, tournament founder and golf legend Bobby Jones resisted calling it the Masters Tournament for this very reason for the outset five years of its existence, when it was just known as the much less catchy Augusta National Invitation Tournament.
The Masters is the most important tournament in the globe of golf, and the weight of its history is what makes it both unique and so great. At the same fourth dimension, the history of the Masters is also what makes it so troubling.
I'm not much of a golf fan. I've never really played, and while I did work as a caddy for a summer or two when I was a teenager, I've never had any interest in the cultural world of the sport. I don't take golf game vacations; I don't even own a prepare of clubs. Nevertheless, I'g a sports fan, and while I'chiliad not an obsessive follower of the world of golf game, I constitute myself, year after yr, watching Masters Sunday — until recently. Something about the way the green grass pops on my Idiot box screen; the hushed, reverent whisper of the announcers; and the overwhelming self-importance of the tournament wormed into me, at to the lowest degree for awhile. Hither, I'd like to explore why that is — and why I observe information technology and so distasteful at the same fourth dimension.
History Creates Loftier-Stakes Action
Without question, the matter that gives the Masters virtually of its entreatment is that of the four tournaments that make up golf'southward Chiliad Slam — the Masters, the U.South. Open, the Open Championship (oftentimes called the British Open), and the PGA Championship — the Masters is the just one that takes identify on the aforementioned course every twelvemonth. That grade, Augusta National in Augusta, Georgia, commencement opened in 1932. The tournament began in 1934. That makes it the babe of the bunch — it's newer than all the other Slams.
The fact that as of its history has happened on ane course gives the Masters a feeling of nostalgia that draws in spectators (both the "patrons" at the form itself and those of united states of america just watching on TV). Augusta National is rife with tricky names for things, and these names first to feel like they are inviting you into some sort of secret club. The best example is "Amen Corner": the name given to the back half of the 11th hole, all of the twelfth hole, and the beginning couple of shots of the 13th pigsty.
The proper noun itself has a strange origin story involving a writer named Herbert Warren Wind and an quondam jazz tune chosen "Shoutin' in that Amen Corner," but what'south and so cool about the nickname is that it gives the activeness at those 3 holes around Rae's Creek (another famous Masters name) a kind of high-stakes intensity.
Y'all can feel the weight of history as you watch each golfer accept aim at the notoriously difficult Sunday pin placement on the par three 12th hole (a.one thousand.a. "Golden Bong"). Y'all remember all the other years when weird and wild stuff happened in that same place — like Hashemite kingdom of jordan Spieth's meltdown that price him the tournament in 2022 — and you wonder what might happen this time. Really, the whole tournament starts to feel like this after a while, and that's the power of having it on the same class every year.
History Is Also a Reminder of How Far We Accept to Go
The Masters has a slogan: "A tradition unlike any other." Traditions are important, but, in some cases, they're besides evidence of an unwillingness to change. Augusta National admitted its first Black member in 1990, and did non invite a woman to bring together the order until 2012. Butler Cabin, a building past the 18th green where the winner of each twelvemonth'south tournament is given the honorary Light-green Jacket, is a erstwhile plantation house.
That the Masters is so securely enmeshed in nostalgia begs the question: nostalgia for what? That the guild and the tournament have so often dragged their feet when asked to be more inclusive is i kind of respond to that question. The Masters tries its best to make yous feel like you're stepping back in time. Everything looks and sounds like the perfect version of what it's supposed to look and sound like. They literally import pine harbinger, and there are long-standing rumors of piped-in birdsong, food dye in the lakes, and other baroque efforts that the lodge makes to ensure everything seems more perfect than it is in reality.
The folks who run the Masters never seem to inquire, though, who these kinds of efforts concenter, and who they might be keeping away. Or, more than probable, they exercise think to ask, and they know the answer. What is the cost of celebrating this kind of upscale, patrician lifestyle? There have been years, after all, during which the tournament was happening while protests were going on right exterior the high-fenced walls. The toll, of course, is that many people who aren't white men stop upward feeling left out of the hugger-mugger-social club-feeling the Masters bends over backwards to create.
The Importance of Inclusivity and Changing With the Times
Increasingly, I detect myself feeling disenchanted with more and more of the institutions I loved when I was a kid. It's impossible for me to ignore the failure of many of these institutions to embrace such a simple idea as inclusivity. Not that I want to ignore it; I know in my middle that existence discerning is a skilful affair. Equally institutions that are unwilling to change stubbornly and brusque-sightedly hold their ground, they'll as well slowly go irrelevant, and new institutions, hopefully, volition jump up in their identify. I wish the Masters would see that greater openness and an honest acknowledgement of its history of racism and sexism would only mean that more people would get to experience what is so special about the tournament itself.
When I was little, the Masters felt like this magical thing that would show up on my Tv set every yr. I recall watching Nick Faldo tempest ahead equally Greg Norman roughshod apart in '96, and Tiger Woods demolishing the unabridged field by a full 12 strokes at but 21 years old in '97.
Somewhere along the way, I understood that information technology was the history of the Masters that was making me so excited to picket information technology each year. That besides came with an always-increasing realization that history is about everything, non but the skillful, pretty, picturesque stuff — that the things making me feel invited in might be excluding someone else.
The Masters' Telly ratings have been in the midst of a steady reject for much of the past three decades. The people running the tournament can't change the fact that they resisted inclusion for all these years, just they could acknowledge it openly and honestly; they could try to be better in the hereafter. If they did, they might get back some of the viewers they've lost, and they might add some new ones they never had.
Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/history-makes-the-masters-special-and-out-of-touch?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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